LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

' v^/ • 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
Vi.SJ- 



THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 



THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 



A STUDY OF THE GREEK MYTHS 



CLOUD AND STORM 



/ 



JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D. 

HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND HONORAELV EELLOVV 
OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD 



WITH AN INTBODUCrjON BY CHARLES ELIOJ NORTON 



BRANTWOOD EDITION 




CHARLES E. MERRILL & CO., NEW YORK 

GEORGE ALLEN, ORPINGTON AND LONDON 



V \ 



\ 



/8f/ 



SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT 

Mr. George Allen begs to anuounce thai Ruskin's Works 
will hereafler be published in America by Messrs. Charles 
E. Merrill & Co., of New York, who will issue the only 
authorised editions. 



Coj^right J891 
Charles E. Merrill & Co 



INTRODUCTION 



THE study of Greek myths for the purpose 
of ascertaining their moral and spiritual 
significance, and their true relation to the 
religion of the Greeks, had been, for many 
years, a favourite pursuit of Mr. Ruskin's. He 
approached the subject, as he himself says, 
" in a temper differing from that in which 
it is frequently treated." Dr. Johnson, for 
instance, is reported by Boswell as declaring 
that, " had the ancients been serious in their 
belief, we should not have had their gods 
exhibited in the manner we find them repre- 
sented in the poets." Mr. Ruskin assumed 
alike the seriousness and the sincerity of 
their belief To deal with Greek religion 
honestly he rightly conceived that we must 
acknowledge that the belief of the people 
in the myths relating to their gods was 



Vi INTRODUCTION. 

as literal, and "as deeply rooted," as that of 
the mass of Christians " in the legends of 
our own sacred books." This conviction in 
regard to the religious faith of the Greeks gave 
a deeper interest than that of a merely learned 
investigation to the enquiry as to the real 
meaning of these stories. In this enquiry the 
interpretation of texts and the study of institu- 
tions were less important than the examina- 
tion of the contents of the myth itself to 
determine what were the phenomena of nature 
which had originally suggested the attributes 
or the deeds ascribed to the deity or the hero 
who was its subject,and what moral significance 
might underlie them. Products of the poetic 
imagination as they are, the first requirement 
for the right reading of these myths is the 
understanding that all true imaginative vision 
" is founded on laws common to all human 
nature, and that it perceives, however darkly, 
things which are for all ages true." 

In this inquiry, Mr. Ruskin's keen percep- 
tion and long study of the aspects of nature, 
and of the forms in which the imagination 
has expressed itself, together with the bent of 
his disposition toward moral interpretations 



INTRODUCTION. Vll 

of nature and of life, gave him special 
advantages. His explanations are always 
illuminative and suggestive, full of the fine 
insight of a subtle and penetrative genius. 
His exposition of the myths of Athena in 
the first section of the present volume, setting 
forth the conception of her as the life-giving 
and spirit-inspiring Queen of the Air, though 
it may not include all that the enlightened 
Greek worshipped in her ideal image, and 
though it may be modified by the conclusions 
of a deeper scholarship, yet does justice, as 
no other treatment of the subject had done, 
to the beauty, variety, and power of the 
spiritual conceptions which were associated 
with the myths of the birth and attributes of 
the goddess, and of her relations to mankind. 
Now and then it may seem that the play of 
Mr. Ruskin's fancy passes the bounds of 
certitude ; but when the correctness of his 
interpretation is questionable, its value as a 
suggestion of the true direction for further 
inquiry may be quite unimpaired. 

The second of the three sections of this 
volume deals less directly with the elucidation 
of the myths of Athena, and is mainly 



VUl INTRODUCTION. 

occupied with the exposition of the supposed 
relation of Athena to the vital force in 
material organisms. The third section is 
made up of various notes connected by their 
ethical purport with the conception of Athena 
as the directress of the imagination and the 
will. They have little to do with the elucida- 
tion of Greek thought, but they set forth in a 
discursive and somewhat arbitrary manner 
the opinions of Mr. Ruskin on many subjects, 
— such as the function of Athena to teach 
men not to make their work beautiful, but to 
make it right ; on art as the expression of the 
spirit of the artist ; on the foundation of art 
in moral character ; on the fact that all lovely 
art is didactic in its own nature, — as, for 
example, that of Turner ; on the moral source 
of his own power ; on the foundation of 
morals and art in war ; on modern multitudes 
and their occupations ; and, finally, on the 
object of all true policy and true economy. 
The greater part of this last portion of the 
volume thus becomes a treatise on political 
economy, government, and education, and the 
opposition of the spirit of Modesty to that of 
the spirit of Liberty, " that evil liberty which 



INTRODUCTION. IX 

men are now glorifying and proclaiming as 
essence of gospel to all the earth." 

The topics of this miscellaneous discourse 
are loosely strung, like a chain of beads of 
different sizes and of different value. The 
thread of ethical meaning holds and unites 
them. This is the strongest thread of Mr. 
Ruskin's spinning, and this it is which runs 
through all his books, giving to them an 
essential unity of character, harmonizing their 
contradictions and oppositions, and making 
each of them a treatise of moral sentiment 
and moral principle, whatever may be the 
professed subject of its pages. It is this dis- 
position to regard every topic in its relation 
to right and wrong, and in its bearing upon 
conduct, that determined the direction of Mr. 
Ruskin's later teachings, and concentrated 
them all in that wide study of human welfare 
which he named Political Economy. It is a 
long way from the Homeric vision of Athena 
to the principles of modern dress-making, but 
the ethical thread is longer still that strings 
every action and interest of man on its 
endless chain. And these pages, beginning 
with the calm investigation of a beautiful 



X INTRODUCTION. 

myth, end practically with an impassioned 
cry against the social and moral depravity 
of our own days. 

The book was prepared by its author for 
the press in a period of mental depression, 
impatience, and restlessness, of which its con- 
cluding section gives but too abundant 
evidence. Mr. Ruskin was absent from 
England when the printing was going on, he 
refused to correct the sheets himself, and 
rejected the corrections of the friend to whom 
he had entrusted the work of seeing it through 
the press. The volume finally appeared with- 
out any proper revision. Part of this indiffer- 
ence to his work, and disregard of what was 
due to its claims, had its source in his feeling 
in respect to the public disregard of his 
teachings. His moral sentiment was so in- 
tense, and its appeal to the public had been 
so constant and eager, that the indifference 
of men to its cry had wounded him deeply, 
and the rejection of teachings which appealed 
for their sanction to the moral law had 
seemed to him an indication of wilful, or at 
least idle, yet still sinful indifference. Of the 
authority of his teaching he had no questional 



INTRODUCTION. XI 

" You who read," — these are his words, — " may 
trust my thought and word in such work as 
I have to do for you, and you will be glad 
afterwards that you have trusted them." 
This was his temper when he sorrowfully flung 
this volume to the crowd. The denunciation 
of the spirit of modern Liberty with which 
some of its last and most vigorous pages are 
occupied may be supplemented by the follow- 
ing humorous but not less earnest passage 
from a letter written in the course of the 
summer of 1869, the summer in which this 
book was published. 

" The more I see of your new fashions, the 
less I like them. I, a second time (lest the 
first impression should have been too weak), 
was fated to come from Venice to Verona 
with an American family, — father and mother 
and two girls ; presumably rich, — girls fifteen 
and eighteen (years old). I never before 
conceived the misery of wretches who had 
spent all their lives in trying to gratify them- 
selves. It was a little warm, — warmer than 
was entirely luxurious, — but nothing in the 
least harmful. They moaned and fidgeted 
and frowned and puffed and stretched and 



XII INTRODUCTION. 

fanned, and ate lemons, and smelt bottles, and 
covered their faces, and tore the covers off 
again, and had no one thought or feeling, 
during five hours of travelling in the most 
noble part of the world, except what four 
poor beasts would have had, in their den in a 
menagerie, being dragged about on a hot day. 

" Add to this misery, every form of possible 
vulgarity in doing and saying the common 
things they said and did. I never yet saw 
humanity so degraded, allowing for external 
circumstances of every possible advantage. 
Given wealth, attainable education, and the 
inheritance of eighteen centuries of Chris- 
tianity and ten of noble Paganism, — and tliis 
is your result ! by means of ' Liberty.' " 

Such passionate expression as this was 
becoming a more or less habitual self-indul- 
gence with Mr. Ruskin. In reply to remon- 
strance on the ground that this mode of 
impatient and hot utterance detracted from 
the influence of his thought, he declared that 
it would not be right, even were it possible, 
for him to write dispassionately. Who is the 
prophet, with his soul all one flame of pain 
for the misery of the world, that should write 



INTRODUCTION. XIU 

as if his heart were not on fire ? " Don't 
send me any letters," he wrote, " that will re- 
quire any sort of putting-up with or patience, 
because I haven't got any." I had vexed 
him by suggesting that " The Queen of the 
Air" should have a sub-title, — "an attempt 
to interpret," etc. " One doesn't ' attempt,' " 
he went on, " to interpret an inscription ; one 
either does it right or wrong. It is either a 
translation or a mistake. Of course there are 
mistakes in all interpretations, but the gist 
of them is either a thing done or undone, — it 
is not an attempt except in the process of it. 
This Italy " (he was writing from Verona), 
" is such a lovely place to study liberty in ! " 
and then follows a denunciation of wretches 
" left to find the broad way to Hades without 
so much as a blinker, let alone a bridle." 

The first section of " The Queen of the Air " 
is headed " Athena Chalinitis," " Athena the 
Restrainer." Mr. Ruskin, however, had not, 
perhaps, sufficiently laid to heart the signi- 
ficance of the attribute which this epithet 

ascribes to the goddess. 

C. E. N. 
Cameridge, Massachusetts, 
March, 1891. 



PREFACE. 



MY days and strength have lately been 
much broken ; and I never more felt 
the insufficiency of both than in preparing for 
the press the following desultory memoranda 
on a most noble subject. But I leave them now 
as they stand, for no time nor labour would 
be enough to complete them to my content- 
ment ; and I believe that they contain sugges- 
tions which may be followed with safety, by 
persons who are beginning to take interest in 
the aspects of mythology, which only recent 
investigation has removed from the region of 
conjecture into that of rational inquiry. I have 
some advantage, also, from my field work, in 
the interpretation of myths relating to natural 
phenomena : and I have had always near me, 
since we were at college together, a sure, and 
unweariedly kind, guide, in my friend Charles 



XVI PREFACE. 

Newton, to whom we owe the finding of more 
treasure in mines of marble, than, were it 
rightly estimated, all California could buy. I 
must not, however, permit the chance of his 
name being in any wise associated with my 
errors. Much of my work has been done 
obstinately in my own way ; and he is never 
responsible for me, though he has often kept 
me right, or at least enabled me to advance 
in a right direction. Absolutely right no one 
can be in such matters ; nor does a day pass 
without convincing every honest student of 
antiquity of some partial error, and showing 
him better how to think, and where to look. 
But I knew that there was no hope of my 
being able to enter with advantage on the 
fields of history opened by the splendid in- 
vestigation of recent philologists ; though I 
could qualify myself, by attention and sym- 
pathy, to understand, here and there, a verse 
of Homer's or Hesiod's, as the simple people 
did for whom they sang. 

Even while I correct these sheets for press, 
a lecture by Professor Tyndall has been put 
into my hands, which I ought to have heard 
last i6th of January, but was hindered by 



PREFACE. XVU 

mischance ; and which, I now find, completes, 
in two important particulars, the evidence of 
an instinctive truth in ancient symbolism ; 
showing, first, that the Greek conception of an 
ethereal element pervading space is justified 
by the closest reasoning of modern .physicists ; 
and, secondly, that the blue of the sky, hitherto 
thought to be caused by watery vapour, is, 
indeed, reflected from the divided air itself; 
so that the bright blue of the eyes of Athena, 
and the deep blue of her aegis, prove to 
be accurate mythic expressions of natural 
phenomena which it is an uttermost triumph 
of recent science to have revealed. 

Indeed, it would be difficult to imagine 
triumph more complete. To form, " within an 
experimental tube, a bit of more perfect sky 
than the sky itself ! " here is magic of the 
finest sort ! singularly reversed from that of 
old time, which only asserted its competency 
to enclose in bottles elementary forces that 
were — not of the sky. 

Let me, in thanking Professor Tyndall for 
the true wonder of this piece of work, ask his 
pardon, and that of all masters in physical 
science, for any words of mine, either in the 

b 



PREFACE. 



following pages or elsewhere, that may ever 
seem to fail in the respect due to their great 
powers of thought, or in the admiration due to 
the far scope of their discovery. But I will 
be judged by themselves, if I have not bitter 
reason to ask them to teach us more than yet 
they have taught. 

The first day of May, 1869, I am writing 
where my work was begun thirty-five years 
ago, within sight of the snows of the higher 
Alps. In that half of the permitted life of 
man, I have seen strange evil brought upon 
every scene that I best loved, or tried to make 
beloved by others. The light which once 
flushed those pale summits with its rose at 
dawn, and purple at sunset, is now umbered 
and faint ; the air which once inlaid the clefts 
of all their golden crags with azure is now 
defiled with languid coils of smoke, belched 
from worse than volcanic fires ; their very 
glacier waves are ebbing, and their snows 
fading, as if Hell had breathed on them ; the 
waters that once sank at their feet into crys- 
talline rest are now dimmed and foul, from 
deep to deep, and shore to shore. These 
are no careless words — they are accurately — 



PREFACE. XIX 

horribly true. I know what the Swiss lakes 
were ; no pool of Alpine fountain at its source 
was clearer. This morning, on the Lake of 
Geneva, at half a mile from the beach, I could 
scarcely see my oar-blade a fathom deep. 

The light, the air, the waters, all defiled ! 
How of the earth itself? Take this one fact 
for type of honour done by the modern Swiss 
to the earth of his native land. There used to 
be a little rock at the end of the avenue by the 
port of Neuchatel ; there, the last marble of 
the foot of Jura, sloping to the blue water, and 
(at this time of year) covered with bright pink 
tufts of Saponaria. I went, three days since, 
to gather a blossom at the place. The goodly 
native rock and its flowers were covered with 
the dust and refuse of the town ; but, in the 
middle of the avenue, was a newly-constructed 
artificial rockery, with a fountain twisted 
through a spinning spout, and an inscription 
on one of its loose- tumbled stones, — 

" Aux Botanistes, 
Le club Jurassique." 

Ah, masters of modern science, give me back 
my Athena out of your vials, and seal, if it 



XX PREFACE, 

may be, once more, Asmodeus therein. You 
have divided the elements, and united them ; 
enslaved them upon the earth, and discerned 
them in the stars. Teach us, now, but this of 
them, which is all that man need know, — that 
the Air is given to him for his life ; and the 
Rain to his thirst, and for his baptism ; and 
the Fire for warmth ; and the Sun for sight ; 
and the Earth for his meat — and his Rest. 

Vevav, May l, 1869. 



CONTENTS. 



LECTURE I. 

PAGE 
ATHENACHALINITIS (aTHENA IN THE HEAVENS) . 1 



LECTURE II. 

ATHENA KERAMITIS (aTHENA IN THE EARTh) . 78 

LECTURE in. 

ATHENA ERGANE (aTHENA IN THE HEART) . . . I37 



ERRATA. 

Page 1, note, read the last two lines as follows : — Cp. 

Pausanias, Corinthiaea, 4, i. ; and Bellerophon's 

dream, Pind. 01. 13. 95, beginning dye (piXrpov 

roS' Xwmiov. 
„ 4, note, /or " Pausanias, vol. i. 371 " read " Pausanias 

Corinthiaea, 37. 4." 
„ 27, dele note. 

,, 45, note, /or " QpaiTV/u.r)5r]s read " ©pacni/iTjSr/j." 
,, 46, line "J, for " dvdpuv " read " dvSpwi'." 
,, 127, line 9, for "words signifying sight " read "words 

signifying light." 
,, 147, line 2, for " S. Louis " read " St. Louis." 



THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 



ATHENA CHALINITIS.* 

(Athena in the Heavens.) 

Lecture on the Greek Myths of Sforiii, given (partly) in 
University College, London, March gth, 1869. 

I. I WILL not ask your pardon for endeavour- 
ing to interest you in the subject of Greek 
Mythology ; but I must ask your permission to 
approach it in a temper differing from that in 
which it is frequently treated. We cannot justly 
interpret the religion of any people, unless we 
are prepared to admit that we ourselves, as 

* "Athena the Restrainer." The name is given to her 
as having helped Bellerophon to bridle Pegasus, the flying 
cloud. Cp. Pausanias, Cainthiaca 4, beginning <pi\Tpov 
iiriTdov', and Bellerophon's dream, Pind. Ol. 13, 97- 

I 



2 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

well as they, are liable to error in matters of 
faith ; and that the convictions of others, how- 
ever singular, may in some points have been 
well founded, while our own, however reason- 
able, may in some particulars be mistaken. 
You must forgive me, therefore, for not always 
distinctively calling the creeds of the past, 
" superstition," and the creeds of the present 
day, "religion; " as well as for assuming that a 
faith now confessed may sometimes be super- 
ficial, and that a faith long forgotten may once 
have been sincere. It is the task of the Divine 
to condemn the errors of antiquity, and of the 
Philologist to account for them : I will only pray 
you to read, with patience and human S3'm- 
pathy, the thoughts of men who lived without 
blame in a darkness they could not dispel ; and 
to remember that, whatever charge of folly may 
justly attach to the saying, — " There is no God," 
the folly is prouder, deeper, and less pardonable, 
in saying, "There is no God but for me." 

2. A myth, in its simplest definition, is a 
story with a meaning attached to it, other than 
it seems to have at first; and the fact that it has 
such a meaning is generally marked by some of 
its circumstances being extraordinary, or, in the 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 3 

common use of the word, unnatural. Thus, if 
I tell you that Hercules killed a water-serpent 
in the lake of Lcrna, and if I mean, and you 
understand, nothing more than that fact, the 
story, whether true or false, is not a myth. But 
if by telling you this, I mean that Hercules puri- 
fied the stagnation of many streams from deadly 
miasmata, my story, however simple, is a true 
myth; only, as if I left it in that simplicity, you 
would probably look for nothing beyond, it will 
be wise in me to surprise your attention by add- 
ing some singular circumstance ; for instance, 
that the water-snake had several heads, which 
revived as fast as they were killed, and which 
poisoned even the foot that trode upon them as 
they slept. And in proportion to the fulness of 
intended meaning I shall probably multiply and 
refine upon these improbabilities ; as, suppose, 
if, instead of desiring only to tell you that Her- 
cules purified a marsh, I wished you to under- 
stand that he contended with the venom and 
vapour of envy and evil ambition, whether in 
other men's souls or in his own, and choked tJiat 
malaria only by supreme toil — I might tell you 
that this serpent was formed by the Goddess 
whose pride was in the trial of Hercules ; and 



4 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

that its place of abode was by a palm* tree ; 
and that for every head of it that was cut off, 
two rose up with renewed life ; and that the 
hero found at last he could not kill the creature 
at all by cutting its heads off or crushing them; 
but only by burning them down ; and that the 
midmost of them could not be killed even that 
way, but had to be buried alive. Only in pro- 
portion as I mean more I shall certainly appear 
more absurd in my statement; and at last, when 
I get unendurably significant, all practical per- 
sons will agree that I was talking mere nonsense 
from the beginning, and never meant anything 
at all. 

3. It is just possible, however, also, that the 
story-teller may all along have meant nothing 
but what he said ; and that, incredible as the 
events may appear, he himself literally believed 
■ — and expected you also to believe — all this 
about Hercules, without any latent moral or 
history whatever. And it is very necessary, 
in reading traditions of this kind, to determine, 
first of all, whether you are listening to a simple 
person, who is relating what, at all events, he 

* Plane in Pausanias, vol. i. 371 — with Pisander of 
Camirus for author of legend. 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 5 

believes to be true (and may, therefore, possibly 
have been so to some extent), or to a reserved 
philosopher, who is veiling a theory of the uni- 
verse under the grotesque of a fairy tale. It 
is, in general, more Hkely that the first suppo- 
sition should be the right one : — simple and cre- 
dulous persons are, perhaps fortunately, more 
common than philosophers : and it is of the 
highest importance that you should take their 
innocent testimony as it was meant, and not 
efface, under the graceful explanation which 
your cultivated ingenuity may suggest, either the 
evidence their story may contain (such as it is 
worth) of an extraordinary event having really 
taken place, or the unquestionable light which 
it will cast upon the character of the person by 
whom it was frankly believed. And to deal 
with Greek religion honestly, you must at once 
understand that this Hteral belief was, in the 
mind of the general people, as deeply rooted as 
ours in the legends of our own sacred book ; 
and that a basis of unmiraculous event was as 
little suspected, and an explanatory symbolism 
as rarely traced, by them, as by us. 

You must, therefore, observe that 1 deeply 
degrade the position which such a myth as that 



6 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

just referred to occupied in the Greek mind, by 
comparing it (for fear of offending you) to our 
story of St. George and the Dragon. Still, the 
analogy is perfect in minor respects; and though 
it fails to give you any notion of the vitally 
religious earnestness of the Greek faith, it will 
exactly illustrate the manner in which faith laid 
hold of its objects. 

4. lliis story of Hercules and the Hydra, 
then, was to the general Greek mind, in its best 
days, a tale about a real hero and a real monster. 
Not one in a thousand knew anything of the 
way in which the story had arisen, any more 
than the English peasant generally is aware of 
the plebeian origin of St. George ! or supposes 
that there were once alive in the world, with 
sharp teeth and claws, real, and very ugly, fly- 
ing dragons. On the other hand, few persons 
traced any moral or symbolical meaning in the 
story, and the average Greek was as far from 
imagining any interpretation like that I have 
just given you, as an average Englishman is 
from seeing in St. George the Red Cross Knight 
of Spenser, or in the dragon the Spirit of In- 
fidelity. But, for all that, there was a certain 
under-current of consciousness in all minds, 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 7 

that the figures meant more than they at first 
showed; and according to each man's own 
faculties of sentiment, he judged and read them; 
just as a Knight of the Garter reads more in 
the jewel on his collar than the George and 
Dragon of a public-house expresses to the host 
or to his customers. Thus, to the mean person 
the myth always meant little; to the noble per- 
son, much : and the greater their familiarity 
with it, the more contemptible it became to the 
one, and the more sacred to the other : until 
vulgar commentators explained it entirely away, 
while Virgil made it the crowning glory of his 
choral hymn to Hercules : 

" Around thee, powerless to infect thy soul, 
Rose, in his crested crown, the Lerna worm."' 

" Non te rationis egentem 
Lernaeus turba capitum circumstctit anguis."' 

And although, in any special toil of the hero's 
life, the moral interpretation was rarely with de- 
finiteness attached to its event, yet in the whole 
course of the life, not only a symbolical mean- 
ing, but the warrant for the existence of a real 
spiritual power, was apprehended of all men. 
Hercules was no dead hero, to be remembered 
only as a victor over monsters of tlie past — 



8 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

harmless now, as slain. He was the perpetual 
type and mirror of heroism, and its present 
and living aid against every ravenous form 
of human trial and pain. 

5. But, if we seek to know more than this, 
and to ascertain the manner in which the story 
first crystallized into its shape, we shall find our- 
selves led back generally to one or other of two 
sources — either to actual historical events, re- 
presented by the fancy under figures person- 
ifying them ; or else to natural phenomena 
similarly endowed with life by the imaginative 
power, usually more or less under the influence 
of terror. The historical myths we must leave 
the masters of history to follow ; they, and the 
events they record, being yet involved in great, 
though attractive and penetrable, mystery. But 
the stars, and hills, and storms are with us now, 
as they were with others of old ; and it only 
needs that we look at them with the earnestness 
of those childish eyes to understand the first 
words spoken of them by the children of men. 
And then, in all the most beautiful and endur- 
ing myths, we shall find, not only a literal story 
of a real person, — not only a parallel imagery 
of moral principle, — but an underlying worship 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 9 

of natural phenomena, out of which both have 
sprung, and in which both for ever remain 
rooted. Thus, from the real sun, rising and 
setting; — from the real atmosphere, calm in 
its dominion of unfading blue, and fierce in its 
descent of tempest, — the Greek forms first the 
idea of two entirely personal and corporeal gods, 
whose limbs are clothed in divine flesh, and 
whose brows are crowned with divine beauty ; 
yet so real that the quiver rattles at their shoul- 
der, and the chariot bends beneath their weight. 
And on the other hand, collaterally with these 
corporeal images, and never for one instant 
separated from them, he conceives also two 
omnipresent spiritual influences, of which one 
illuminates, as the sun, with a constant fire, 
whatever in humanity is skilful and wise ; and 
the other, like the living air, breathes the calm 
of heavenly fortitude, and strength of righteous 
anger, into every human breast that is pure 
and brave. 

6. Now, therefore, in nearly every myth of 
importance, and certainly in every one of those 
of which I shall speak to-night, you have to 
discern these three structural parts — the root 
and the two branches : — the root, in physical 



lO THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

existence, sun, or sky, or cloud, or sea; then the 
personal incarnation of that ; becoming a trusted 
and companionable deity, with whom you may 
walk hand in hand, as a child with its brother 
or its sister; and, lastly, the moral significance 
of the image, which is in all the great myths 
eternally and beneficently true. 

7: The great myths ; that is to say, myths 
made by great people. For the first plain fact 
about myth-making is one which has been most 
strangely lost sight of, — that you cannot make 
a myth unless you have something to make it 
of. You cannot tell a secret which you don't 
know. If the myth is about the sky, it must 
have been made by somebody who had looked 
at the sky. If the myth is about justice and 
fortitude, it must have been made by some one 
who knew what it was to be just or patient. 
According to the quantity of understanding in 
the person will be the quantity of significance 
in his fable ; and the myth of a simple and 
ignorant race must necessarily mean little, be- 
cause a simple and ignorant race have little to 
mean. So the great question in reading a story 
is always, not what wild hunter dreamed, or 
what childish race first dreaded it ; but what 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. II 

wise man first perfectly told, and what strong 
people first perfectly lived by it. And the real 
meaning of any myth is that which it has at 
the noblest age of the nation among whom it is 
current. The farther back you pierce, the less 
significance you will find, until you come to the 
first narrow thought, which, indeed, contains the 
germ of the accomplished tradition; but only 
as the seed contains the flower. As the intelli- 
gence and passion of the race dtvelope, they 
cling to and nourish their beloved and sacred 
legend; leaf by leaf, it expands, under the touch 
of more pure affections, and more delicate ima- 
gination, until at last the perfect fable burgeons 
out into symmetry of milky stem, and honeyed 
bell. 

8. But through whatever changes it may 
pass, remember that our right reading of it is 
wholly dependent on the materials we have in 
our own minds for an intelligent answering 
sympathy. If it first arose among a people who 
dwelt under stainless skies, and measured their 
journeys by ascending and declining stars, we 
certainly cannot read their story, if we have 
never seen anything above us in the day, but 
smoke; nor anything round us in the night but 



12 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

candles. If the tale goes on to change clouds 
or planets into living creatures, — to invest them 
with fair forms — and inflame them with mighty 
passions, we can only understand the story of 
the human-hearted things, in so far as we our- 
selves take pleasure in the perfectness of visible 
form, or can sympathize, by an effort of ima- 
gination, with the strange people who had other 
loves than that of wealth, and other interests 
than those of commerce. And, lastly, if the 
myth complete itself to the fulfilled thoughts of 
the nation, by attributing to the gods, whom 
they have carved out of their fantasy, continual 
presence with their own souls ; and their every 
effort for good is finally guided by the sense 
of the companionship, the praise, and the pure 
will of Immortals, we shall be able to follow 
them into this last circle of their faith only in 
the degree in which the better parts of our own 
beings have been also stirred by the aspects of 
nature, or strengthened by her laws. It may be 
easy to prove that the ascent of Apollo in his 
chariot signifies nothing but the rising of the 
sun. But what does the sunrise itself signify 
to us ? If only languid return to frivolous 
amusement, or fruitless labour, it will, indeed, 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 1 3 

not be easy for us to conceive the power, over 
a Greek, of the name of Apollo. But if, for us 
also, as for the Greek, the sunrise means daily 
restoration to the sense of passionate gladness, 
and of perfect life — if it means the thrilling of 
new strength through every nerve, — the shed- 
ding over us of a better peace than the peace of 
night, in the power of the dawn, — and the purg- 
ing of evil vision and fear by the baptism of its 
dew; if the sun itself is an influence, to us also, 
of spiritual good — and becomes thus in reality, 
not in imagination, to us also, a spiritual power, 
— we may then soon over-pass the narrow limit 
of conception which kept that power impersonal, 
and rise with the Greek to the thought of an 
angel who rejoiced as a strong man to run his 
course, whose voice, calling to life and to labour, 
rang round the earth, and whose going forth 
was to the ends of heaven. 

9. The time, then, at which I shall take up 
for you, as well as I can decipher it, the tradition 
of the Gods of Greece, shall be near the begin- 
ning of its central and formed faith, — about 
500 B.C., — a faith of which the character is per- 
fectly represented by Pindar and ^schylus, who 
are both of them out-spokenly religious, and 



14 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

entirely sincere men; while we may always look 
back to find the less developed thought of the 
preceding epoch given by Homer, in a more 
occult, subtle, half-instinctive and involuntary 
way. 

lO. Now, at that culminating period of the 
Greek religion we find, under one governing 
Lord of all things, four subordinate elemental 
forces, and four spiritual powers living in them, 
and commanding them. The elements are of 
course the well-known four of the ancient world 
— the earth, the waters, the fire, and the air ; 
and the living powers of them are Demeter, 
the Latin Ceres ; Poseidon, the Latin Neptune ; 
Apollo, who has retained always his Greek 
name ; and Athena, the Latin Minerva. Each 
of these is descended from, or changed from, 
more ancient, and therefore more mystic deities 
of the earth and heaven, and of a finer element 
of aether supposed to be beyond the heavens ; * 
but at this time we find the four quite definite, 
both in their kingdoms and in their personali- 
ties. They are the rulers of the earth that we 
tread upon, and the air that we breathe ; and 

* And by modern science now also asserted, and with 
probability argued, to exist. 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS, 1 5 

are with us as closely, in their vivid humanity, 
as the dust that they animate, and the winds 
that they bridle. I shall briefly define for you 
the range of their separate dominions, and then 
follow, as far as we have time, the most mter- 
esting of the legends which relate to the queen 
of the air. 

1 1. The rule of the first spirit, Demeter, the 
earth mother, is over the earth, first, as the origin 
of all life — the dust from whence we were taken : 
secondly, as the receiver of all things back at 
last into silence — " Dust thou art, and unto 
dust shalt thou return." And, therefore, as the 
most tender image of this appearing" and fading 
life, in the birth and fall of flowers, her daughter 
Proserpine plays in the fields of Sicily, and 
thence is torn away into darkness, and becomes 
the Queen of Fate — not merely of death, but 
of the gloom which closes over and ends, not 
beauty only, but sin ; and of sins, chiefly the 
sin against the Hfe she gave : so that she is, in 
her highest power, Persephone, the avenger and 
purifier of blood, — "The voice of thy brother's 
blood cries to me out of the ground." Then, 
side by side with this queen of the earth, we 
find a demigod of agriculture by the plough — 



l6 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

the lord of grain, or of the thing ground by the 
mill. And it is a singular proof of the simplicity 
of Greek character at this noble time, that of all 
representations left to us of their deities by 
their art, few are so frequent, and none perhaps 
so beautiful, as the symbol of this spirit of 
agriculture. 

12. Then the dominant spirit of the element 
of water is Neptune, but subordinate to him are 
myriads of other water spirits, of whom Nereus 
is the chief, with Palaemon, and Leucothea, the 
"white lady" of the sea; and Thetis, and nymphs 
innumerable, who, like her, could " suffer a sea 
change," while the river deities had each inde- 
pendent power, according to the preciousncss 
of their streams to the cities fed by them, — the 
" fountain Arethuse, and thou, honoured flood, 
smooth .sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal 
reeds." And, spiritually, this king of the waters 
is lord of the strength and daily flow of human 
life — he gives it material force and victory ; 
which is the meaning of the dedication of the 
hair, as the sign of the strength of life, to the 
river of the native land. 

13. Demeter, then, over the earth, and its 
giving and receivmg of life. Neptune over the 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 1 7 

waters, and the flow and force of life,^ — always 
among the Greeks typified by the horse, which 
was to them as a crested sea-wave, animated 
and bridled. Then the third element, fire, has 
set over it two powers : over earthly fire, the 
assistant of human labour, is set Hephaestus, 
lord of all labour in which is the flush and the 
sweat of the brow ; and over heavenly fire, the 
source of day, is set Apollo, the spirit of all 
kindling, purifying, and illuminating intellectual 
wisdom ; each of these gods having also their 
subordinate or associated powers — servant, or 
sister, or companion muse. 

14. Then, lastly, we come to the myth which 
is to be our subject of closer inquiry — the story 
of Athena and of the deities subordinate to her. 
This great goddess, the Neith of the Egyptians, 
the Athena or Athenaia of the Greeks, and, 
with broken power, half usurped by Mars, the 
Minerva of the Latins, is, physically, the queen 
of the air ; having supreme powder both over its 
blessings of calm, and wrath of storm ; and 
spiritually, she is the queen of the breath of 
man, first of the bodily breathing which is life 
to his blood, and strength to his arm in battle ; 
and then of the mental breathing, or inspiration, 

2 



l8 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

which is his moral health and habitual wisdom ; 
wisdom of conduct and of the heart, as opposed 
to the wisdom of imagination and the brain ; 
moral, as distinct from intellectual ; inspired, as 
distinct from illuminated. 

15. By a singular, and fortunate, though I 
believe wholly accidental coincidence, the heart- 
virtue, of which she is the spirit, was separated 
by the ancients into four divisions, which have 
since obtained acceptance from all men as rightly 
discerned, and have received, as if from the 
quarters of the four winds of which Athena is 
the natural queen, the name of " Cardinal " vir- 
tues : namely, Prudence, (the right seeing, and 
foreseeing, of events through darkness) ; Justice, 
(the righteous bestowal of favour and of indigna- 
tion) : Fortitude, (patience under trial by pain) ; 
and Temperance, (patience under trial by plea- 
sure). With respect to these four virtues, the 
attributes of Athena are all distinct. In her 
prudence, or sight in darkness, she is '*Glau- 
kopis," owl-eyed.* In her justice, which is the 
dominant virtue, she wears two robes, one of 
light and one of darkness ; the robe of light, 

* There are many other meanings in the epithet ; see, 
farther on, § 91, p. 122. 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. IQ 

saffron colour, or the colour of the daybreak, falls 
to her feet, covering her wholly with favour and 
love, — the calm of the sky in blessing ; it is 
embroidered along its edge with her victory over 
the giants, (the troublous powers of the earth,) 
and the likeness of it was woven yearly by the 
Athenian maidens and carried to the temple of 
their own Athena, — not to the Parthenon, that 
was the temple of all the world's Athena, — but 
this they carried to the temple of their own only 
one, who loved them, and stayed with them 
always. Then her robe of indignation is worn 
on her breast and left arm only, fringed with 
fatal serpents, and fastened with Gorgoniancold, 
turning men to stone ; physicall}', the lightning 
and the hail of chastisement by storm. Then 
in her fortitude she wears the crested and un- 
stooping helmet ;* and lastly, in her temperance, 
she is the queen of maidenhood — stainless as 
the air of heaven. 

1 6. But all these virtues mass themselves in 
the Greek mind into the two main ones — of 

* I am compelled, for clearness' sake, to mark only one 
meaning at a time. Athena's helmet is sometimes a mask — 
sometimes a sign of anger— sometimes of the highest light 
of aether : but I cannot speak of all this at once. 



20 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

Justice, or noble passion, and Fortitude, or noble 
patience ; and of these, the chief powers of 
Athena, the Greeks had divinely written for 
them, and for all men after them, two mighty 
songs,— one, of the Menis,* mens, passion, or 
zeal, of Athena, breathed into a mortal whose 
name is " Ache of heart," and whose short life 
is only the incarnate brooding and burst of 
storm ; and the other is of the foresight and 
fortitude of Athena, maintained by her in the 
heart of a mortal whose name is given to him 
from a longer grief, Odysseus the full of sorrow, 
the much-enduring, and the long-suffering. 

17. The minor expressions by the Greeks in 
word, in symbol, and in religious service, of this 
faith, are so many and so beautiful, that I hope 
some day to gather at least a few of them into a 
separate body of evidence respecting the power 
of Athena, and its relations to the ethical con- 
ception of the Homeric poems, or rather, to their 
ethical nature ; for they are not conceived didac- 
tically, but are didactic in their essence, as all 
good art is. There is an increasing insensibility 

* This first word of the Iliad, Menis, afterwards passes 
into the Latin Mens ; is the root of the Latin name for 
Athena, "Minerva," and so of the English "mind." 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 21 

to this character, and even an open denial of 
it, among us, now, which is one of the most 
curious errors of modernism, — the pecuhar and 
judicial blindness of an age which, having long- 
practised art and poetry for the sake of pleasure 
only, has become incapable of reading their 
language when they were both didactic : and 
also having been itself accustomed to a pro- 
fessedly didactic teaching, which yet, for private 
interests, studiously avoids collision with every 
prevalent vice of its day (and especially with 
avarice), has become equally dead to the in- 
tensely ethical conceptions of a race which 
habitually divided all men into two broad classes 
of worthy or worthless ; — good and good for 
nothing. And even the celebrated passage of 
Horace about the Iliad is now misread or dis- 
believed, as if it was impossible that the Iliad 
could be instructive because it is not like a 
sermon. Horace does not say that it is like a 
sermon, and would have been still less likely to 
say so, if he ever had had the advantage of 
hearing a sermon. " I have been reading that 
story of Troy again " (thus he writes to a noble 
youth of Rome whom he cared for), " quietly 
at Praeneste, while you have been busy at Rome; 



22 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

and truly I think that what is base and what is 
noble, and what useful and useless, may be better 
learned from that than from all Chrysippus' and 
Grantor's talk put together." * Which is pro- 
foundly true, not of the Iliad only, but of all other 
great art whatsoever ; for all pieces of such art 
are didactic in the purest way, indirectly and 
occultly, so that, first, you shall only be bettered 
by them if you are already hard at work in 
bettering yourself; and when you are bettered 
by them it shall be partly with a general accept- 
ance of their influence, so constant and subtle 
that you shall be no more conscious of it than 
of the healthy digestion of food ; and partly by 
a gift of unexpected truth, which you shall only 
find by slow mining for it ; — which is withheld 
on purpose, and close-locked, that you may not 
get it till you have forged the key of it in a 
furnace of your own heating. And this with- 
holding of their meaning is continual, and con- 
fessed, in the great poets. Thus Pindar says 
of himself: "There is many an arrow in my 
quiver, full of speech to the wise, but, for the 

* Note, once for all, that unless when there is question 
about some particular expression, I never translate literally, 
but give the real force of what is said, as I best can, freely. 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 23 

many, they need interpreters." And neither 
Pindar, nor ^schylus, nor Hesiod, nor Homer, 
nor any of the greater poets or teachers of any 
nation or time, ever spoke but with intentional 
reservation : nay, beyond this, there is often a 
meaning which they themselves cannot inter- 
pret, — which it may be for ages long after them 
to interpret, — in what they said, so far as it 
recorded true imaginative vision. For all the 
greatest myths have been seen, by the men who 
tell them, involuntarily and passively, — seen by 
them with as great distinctness (and in some 
respects, though not in all, under conditions as 
far beyond the control of their will) as a dream 
sent to any of us by night when we dream 
clearest ; and it is this veracity of vision that 
could not be refused, and of moral that could 
not be foreseen, which in modern historical 
inquiry has been left wholly out of account : 
being indeed the thing w hich no merely historical 
investigator can understand, or even believe ; for 
it belongs exclusively to the creative or artistic 
group of men, and can only be interpreted by 
those of their race, who themselves in some 
measure also see visions and dream dreams. 
So that you may obtain a more truthful idea 



24 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

of the nature of Greek religion and legend from 
the poems of Keats, and the nearly as beautiful, 
and, in general grasp of subject, far more power- 
ful, recent work of Morris, than from frigid 
scholarship, however extensive. Not that the 
poet's impressions or renderings of things are 
wholly true, but their truth is vital, not formal. 
They are like sketches from lile by Reynolds or 
Gainsborough, which may be demonstrably in- 
accurate or imaginary in many traits, and indis- 
tinct in others, yet will be in the deepest sense 
like, and true; while the work of historical ana- 
lysis is too often weak with loss, through the 
very labour of its miniature touches, or useless 
in clumsy and vapid veracity of externals, and 
complacent security of having done all that is 
required for the portrait, when it has measured 
the breadth of the forehead, and the length of 
the nose. 

1 8. The first of requirements, then, for the 
right reading of myths, is the understanding of 
the nature of all true vision by noble persons ; 
namely, that it is founded on constant laws 
common to all human nature ; that it perceives, 
however darkly, things which are for all ages 
true ; — that we can only understand it so far as 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 2$ 

we have some perception of the same truth ; — 
and that its fuhiess is developed and manifested 
more and more by the reverberation of it from 
minds of the same mirror-temper, in succeeding 
ages. You will understand Homer better by 
seeing his reflection in Dante, as you may trace 
new forms and softer colours in a hillside, re- 
doubled by a lake. 

I shall be able parti}- to show j^ou, even 
to-night, how much, in the Homeric vision of 
Athena, has been made clearer by the advance 
of time, being thus essentially and eternally 
true ; but I must in the outset indicate the 
relation to that central thought of the imagery 
of the inferior deities of storm. 

19. And first I will take the myth of ^olus 
(the " sage Hippotades " of Milton's Lycidas), 
as it is delivered pure by Homer from the 
early times. 

Why do you suppose Milton calls him "sage"? 
One does not usually think of the winds as 
very thoughtful or deliberate powers. But hear 
Homer : " Then we came to the JEo\mn island, 
and there dwelt ^olus Hippotades, dear to the 
deathless gods : there he dwelt in a floating- 
island, and round it was a wall of brass that 



26 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

could not be broken; and the smooth rock of it 
ran up sheer. To whom twelve children were 
born in the sacred chamber — six daughters and 
six strong sons ; and they dwell for ever with 
their beloved father, and their mother strict in 
duty ; and with them are laid up a thousand 
benefits; and the misty house around them rings 
with fluting all the day long."* Now, you are to 
note first, in this description, the wall of brass 
and the sheer rock. You will find, throughout 
the fables of the tempest-group, that the brazen 
wall and precipice (occurring in another myth as 
the brazen tower of Danae) are always connected 
with the idea of the towering cloud lighted by 
the sun, here truly described as a floating island. 
Secondly, you hear that all treasures were laid 
up in them ; therefore, you know this iEolus 
is lord of the beneficent winds (" he bringeth 
the wind out of his treasuries ") ; and presently 
afterwards Homer calls him the " steward " of 
the winds, the master of the storehouse of them. 
And this idea of gifts and preciousness in the 
winds of heaven is carried out in the well-known 
sequel of the fable : — ^Eolus gives them to 
Ulysses, all but one, bound in a leathern bag, 
* Conf. Eurip. Bacch, 144, 147. 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 2/ 

with a glittering cord of silver ; and so like a bag 
of treasures that the sailors think it is one, and 
open it to see. And when Ulysses is thus driven 
back to iEolus, and prays him again to help 
him, note the deliberate words of the King's 
refusal, — " Did I not," he says, " send thee on 
thy way heartily, that thou mightest reach thy 
country, thy home, and whatever is dear to 
thee ? It is not lawful for me again to send 
forth favourably on his journey a man hated by 
the happy gods." This idea of the beneficence 
of -(Eolus remains to the latest times, though 
Virgil, by adopting the vulgar change of the 
cloud island into Lipari,* has lost it a little; 
but even when it is finally explained away by 
Diodorus, ^Eolus is still a kind-hearted monarch, 
who lived on the coast of Sorrento, invented 
the use of sails, and established a system of 
storm signals. 

20. Another beneficent storm-power, Boreas, 
occupies an important place in early legend, and 
a singularly principal one in art ; and I wish I 
could read to you a passage of Plato about the 
legend of Boreas and Oreithyia,t and the breeze 

* Conf. ^n., viii. 416. 

f- Translated by Max MuUer in the opening of his essay 



'28 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

and shade of the Ih'ssus — notwithstanding its 
severe reflection upon persons who waste their 
time on mythological studies; but I must go 
on at once to the fable with which you are all 
generally familiar, — that of the Harpies. 

This is always connected with that of Boreas 
or the north wind, because the two sons of 
Boreas are enemies of the Harpies, and drive 
them away into frantic flight.* The myth in its 
first literal form means only the battle between 
the fair north wind and the foul south one : the 
two Harpies, "Storm-swift," and " Swiftfoot," 
are the sisters of the rainbow — that is to say, 
they are the broken drifts of the showery south 
wind, and the clear north wind drives them 
back; but they quickly take a deeper and more 
malignant significance. You know the short, 
violent, spiral gusts that lift the dust before 
coming rain : the Harpies get identified first 
with these, and then with more violent whirl- 
winds, and so they are called " Harpies," " the 
Snatchers," and are thought of as entirely de- 
structive ; their manner of destroying being 

on "Comparative Mytholog-y." {C/iips front a German 
Workshop ; vol. ii.) 

* Zetes and Calais, Find. Pyth, 4, 324, have rough purple 
{i.e., fiery) wings. 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 29 

twofold — by snatching away, and by defiling 
and polluting. This is a month in which you 
may really see a small Harpy at her work almost 
whenever you choose. The first time that there 
is threatening of rain after two or three days of 
fine weather, leave your window well open to the 
street, and some books or papers on the table; 
and if you do not, in a little while, know what 
the Harpies mean ; and how they snatch, and 
how they defile, I'll give up my Greek myths. 

21. That is the physical meaning. It is now 
easy to find the mental one. You must all have 
felt the expression of ignoble anger in those 
fitful gusts of sudden storm. There is a sense 
of provocation and apparent bitterness of pur- 
pose in their thin and senseless fury, wholly 
different from the noble anger of the greater 
tempests. Also, they seem useless and un- 
natural, and the Greek thinks of them always 
as vile in malice, and opposed, therefore, to the 
sons of Boreas, who are kindly winds, that fill 
sails, and wave harvests,— full of bracing health 
and happy impulses.* From this lower and 
merely malicious temper, the Harpies rise into 
a greater terror, always associated with their 

* Conf. Refreshment of Sarpedon, II. v. 697. 



30 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

whirling motion, which is indeed indicative of 
the most destructive winds : and they are thus 
related to the nobler tempests, as Charybdis 
to the sea ; they are devouring and desolating, 
merciless, making all things disappear that come 
in their grasp : and so, spiritually, they are the 
gusts of vexatious, fretful, lawless passion, vain 
and over-shadowing, discontented and lament- 
ing, meagre and insane, — spirits of wasted en- 
ergy, and wandering disease, and unappeased 
famine, and unsatisfied hope. So you have, on 
the one side, the winds of prosperity and health, 
on the other, of ruin and sickness. Under- 
stand that, once, deeply — any who have ever 
known the weariness of vain desires ; the piti- 
ful, unconquerable, coiling and recoiling, and 
self-involved returns of some sickening famine 
and thirst of heart : — and you will know what 
was in the sound of the Harpy Celaeno's shriek 
from her rock ; and why, in the seventh circle 
of the " Inferno," the Harpies make their nests 
in the warped branches of the trees that are the 
souls of suicides. 

22. Now you must always be prepared to read 
Greek legends as you trace threads through 
figures on a silken damask : the same thread 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 3 1 

runs through the web, but it makes part of dif- 
ferent figures. Joined with other colours you 
hardly recognize it, and in different lights, it is 
dark or light. Thus the Greek fables blend and 
cross curiously in different directions, till they 
knit themselves into an arabesque where some- 
times you cannot tell black from purple, nor 
blue from emerald — they being all the truer for 
this, because the truths of emotion they repre- 
sent are interwoven in the same way, but all 
the more difficult to read, and to explain in any 
order. Thus the Harpies, as they represent 
vain desire, are connected with the Sirens, who 
are the spirits of constant desire : so that it is 
difficult sometimes in early art to know which 
are meant, both being represented alike as birds 
with women's heads : only the Sirens are the 
great constant desires — the infinite sicknesses 
of heart — which, rightly placed, give life, and 
wrongly placed, waste it away ; so that there 
are two groups of Sirens, one noble and saving, 
as the other is fatal. But there are no animat- 
ing or saving Harpies ; their nature is always 
vexing and full of weariness, and thus they 
are curiously connected with the whole group 
of legends about Tantalus. 



32 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

23. We all know what it is to be tantalized ; 
but we do not often think of asking what Tan- 
talus was tantalized for— what he had done, 
to be for ever kept hungry in sight of food ? 
Well ; he had not been condemned to this 
merely -for being a glutton. By Dante the same 
punishment is assigned to simple gluttony, to 
purge it away ; — but the sins of Tantalus were 
of a much wider and more mysterious kind. 
There are four great sins attributed to him — 
one, stealing the food of the Gods to give it to 
men : another, sacrificing his son to feed the 
Gods themselves (it may remind you for a mo- 
ment of what I was telling you of the earthly 
character of Demeter, that, while the other Gods 
all refuse, she, dreaming about her lost daughter, 
eats part of the shoulder of Pelops before she 
knows what she is doing) ; another sin is, 
telling the secrets of the Gods ; and only the 
fourth — stealing the golden dog of Pandareos — 
is connected with gluttony. The special sense 
of this myth is marked by Pandareos receiving 
the happy privilege of never being troubled 
with indigestion ; the dog, in general, however, 
mythically represents all utterly senseless and 
carnal desires ; mainly that of gluttony ; and in 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 33 

the mythic sense of Hades — that is to say, so 
far as it represents spiritual ruin in this hfe, 
and not a Hteral hell — the dog Cerberus is its 
gate-keeper — with this special marking of his 
character of sensual passion, that he fawns on 
all those who descend, but rages against all who 
would return (the Virgilian " facilis descensus " 
being a later recognition of this mythic character 
of Hades) : the last labour of Hercules is the 
dragging him up to the light ; and in some sort, 
he represents the voracity or devouring of Hades 
itself; and the mediaeval representation of the 
mouth of hell perpetuates the same thought. 
Then, also, the power of evil passion is partly 
associated with the red and scorching light of 
Sirius, as opposed to the pure light of the sun : 
— he is the dog-star of ruin ; and hence the 
continual Homeric dwelling upon him, and com- 
parison of the flame of anger to his swarthy 
light ; only, in his scorching, it is thirst, not 
hunger, over which he rules physically ; so 
that the fable of Icarius, his first master, corre- 
sponds, among the Greeks, to the legend of the 
drunkenness of Noah. 

The story of Actaeon, the raging death of 
Hecuba, and the tradition of the white dog 

3 



34 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

which ate part of Hercules' first sacrifice, and 
so gave name to the Cynosarges, are all various 
phases of the same thought — the Greek notion 
of the dog being throughout confused between 
its serviceable fidelity, its watchfulness, its foul 
voracity, shamelessness, and deadly madness, 
while with the curious reversal or recoil of the 
meaning which attaches itself to nearly every 
great myth — and which we shall presently see 
notably exemplified in the relations of the ser- 
pent to Athena, — the dog becomes in philosophy 
a type of severity and abstinence. 

24. It would carry us too far aside were I to 
tell you the story of Pandareos' dog — or rather, 
of Jupiter's dog, for Pandareos was its guardian 
only ; all that bears on our present purpose is 
that the guardian of this golden dog had three 
daughters, one of whom was subject to the 
power of the Sirens, and is turned into the 
nightingale ; and the other two were subject to 
the power of the Harpies, and this was what 
happened to them. They were very beautiful, 
and they were beloved by the gods in their 
youth, and all the great goddesses were anxious 
to bring them up rightly. Of all types of young 
ladies' education, there is nothing so splendid 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 35 

as that of the younger daughters of Pandareos. 
They have Uterally the four greatest goddesses 
for their governesses. Athena teaches them 
domestic accompHshments ; how to weave, and 
sew, and the Hke ; Artemis teaches them to hold 
themselves up straight ; Hera, how to behave 
proudly and oppressively to company ; and 
Aphrodite — delightful governess — feeds them 
with cakes and honey all day long. All goes 
well, until just the time when they are going to 
be brought out ; then there is a great dispute 
whom they are to marry, and in the midst of 
it they are carried off by the Harpies, given by 
them to be slaves to the Furies, and never seen 
more. But of course there is nothing in Greek 
myths ; and one never heard of such things 
as vain desires, and empty hopes, and clouded 
passions, defiling and snatching away the souls 
of maidens, in a London season. 

I have no time to trace for you any more 
harpy legends, though they are full of the most 
curious interest ; but I may confirm for you my 
interpretation of this one, and prove its impor- 
tance in the Greek mind, by noting that Poly- 
gnotus painted these maidens, in his great 
religious series of paintings at Delphi, crowned 



36 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

with flowers, and playing at dice; and that Pene- 
lope remembers them in her last fit of despair, 
just before the return of Ulysses ; and prays 
bitterly that she may be snatched away at once 
into nothingness by the Harpies, like Pandareos 
daughters, rather than be tormented longer by 
her deferred hope, and anguish of disappointed 
love. 

25. I have hitherto spoken only of deities of 
the winds. We pass now to a far more impor- 
tant group, the Deities of Cloud. Both of these 
are subordinate to the ruling power of the air, 
as the demigods of the fountains and minor seas 
are to the great deep : but as the cloud-firma- 
ment detaches itself more from the air, and has 
a wider range of ministry than the minor streams 
and sea, the highest cloud deity, Hermes, has a 
rank more equal with Athena than Nereus or 
Proteus with Neptune ; and there is greater 
difficulty in tracing his character, because his 
physical dominion over the clouds can, of course, 
be asserted only where clouds are ; and, there- 
fore, scarcely at all in Egypt : * so that the 

* I believe that the conclusions of recent scholarship are 
generally opposed to the Herodotean ideas of any direct 
acceptance by the Greeks of Egyptian Myths : and very 
certainly, Greek art is developed by giving the veracity and 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 3/ 

changes which Hermes undergoes in becoming 
a Greek from an Egyptian and Phoenician god, 
are greater than in any other case of adopted 
tradition. In Egypt Hermes is a deity of his- 
torical record, and a conductor of the dead to 
judgment ; the Greeks take away much of this 
historical function, assigning it to the Muses ; 
but, in investing him with the physical power 
over clouds, they give him that which the Muses 
disdain — the power of concealment, and of theft. 
The snatching away by the Harpies is with 
brute force; but the snatching away by the 
clouds is connected with the thought of hiding, 
and of making things seem to be what they are 
not ; so that Hermes is the god of lying, as he 
is of mist ; and yet with this ignoble function 
of making things vanish and disappear, is con- 
nected the remnant of his grand Egyptian autho- 
rity of leading away souls in the cloud of death 
(the actual dimness of sight caused by mortal 
wounds physically suggesting the darkness and 
descent of clouds, and continually being so 

simplicity of real life to Eastern savage grotesque ; and not 
by softening the severity of pure Egyptian designs. But it is 
of no consequence whether one conception was, or was not, 
in this case, derived from the other ; my object is only to 
mark the essential differences between them. 



38 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

described in the Iliad) ; while the sense of the 
need of guidance on the untrodden road follows 
necessarily. You cannot but remember how this 
thought of cloud guidance, and cloud receiving 
of souls at death, has been elsewhere ratified. 

26. Without following that higher clue, I will 
pass to the lovely group of myths connected 
with the birth of Hermes on the Greek moun- 
tains. You know that the valley of Sparta is 
one of the noblest mountain ravines in the 
world, and that the western flank of it is formed 
by an unbroken chain of crags, forty miles long» 
rising, opposite Sparta, to a height of 8,000 feet, 
and known as the chain of Taygetus. Now 
the nymph from whom that mountain ridge is 
named, was the mother of Lacedaemon ; there- 
fore, the mythic ancestress of the Spartan race. 
She is the nymph Taygeta, and one of the seven 
stars of spring ; one of those Pleiades of whom 
is the question to Job, — "Canst thou bind the 
sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands 
of Orion ? " " The sweet influences of Pleiades," 
of the stars of spring, — nowhere .sweeter than 
among the pineclad slopes of the hills of Sparta 
and Arcadia, when the snows of their higher 
summits, beneath the sunshine of April, fell into 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 39 

fountains, and rose into clouds ; and in every 
ravine was a newly-awakened voice of waters, 
— soft increase of whisper among its sacred 
stones : and on every crag its forming and fad- 
ing veil of radiant cloud ; temple above temple, 
of the divine marble that no tool can pollute, 
nor ruin undermine. And, therefore, beyond 
this central valley, this great Greek vase of 
Arcadia, on the ^^ Jiollow" mountain, Cyllene, or 
" pregnant " mountain, called also " cold," be- 
cause there the vapours rest,* and born of the 
eldest of those stars of spring, that Maia, from 
whom your own month of May has its name, 
bringing to you, in the green of her garlands 
and the white of her hawthorn, the unrecog- 
nized symbols of the pastures and the wreathed 
snows of Arcadia, where long ago she was 
queen of stars: there, first cradled and wrapt 
in swaddling-clothes ; then raised, in a moment 
of surprise, into his wandering power, — is 
born the shepherd of the clouds, winged-footed 
and deceiving, — blinding the eyes of Argus, — 
escaping from the grasp of Apollo — restless 

* On the altar of Hermes on its summit, as on that of the 
Lacinian Hera, no wind ever stirred the ashes. Beside 
those altars, the Gods of Heaven were appeased : and all 
their storms at rest. 



40 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

messenger between the lowest sky and topmost 
earth — 

"the herald Mercury, 
New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill." 

27. Now, it will be wholly impossible, at pre- 
sent, to trace for you any of the minor Greek 
expressions of this thought, except only that 
Mercury, as the cloud shepherd, is especially 
called Eriophoros, the wool-bearer. You will 
recollect the name from the common woolly rush 
" eriophorum," which has a cloud of silky seed ; 
and note also that he wears distinctively the flat 
cap, petasos, named from a word meaning to ex- 
pand ; which shaded from the sun, and is worn 
on journeys. You have the epithet of moun- 
tains " cloud-capped " as an established form 
with every poet, and the Mont Pilate of Lucerne 
is named from a Latin word signifying specially 
a woollen cap; but Mercury has, besides, a gene- 
ral Homeric epithet, curiously and intensely 
concentrated in meaning, "the profitable or ser- 

* I am convinced that the ept in ipiouvios is not intensitive ; 
but retained from ^piov : but even if I am wrong in thinking 
this, the mistake is of no consequence with respect to the 
general force of the term as meaning the profitableness 
of Hermes. Athena's epithet of ay^Xiia has a parallel 
significance. 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 4I 

viceable by wool," * that is to say, by shepherd 
wealth ; hence, " pecuniarily," rich, or service- 
able, and so he passes at last into a general 
mercantile deity ; while yet the cloud sense of 
the wool is retained by Homer always, so that 
he gives him this epithet when it would other- 
wise have been quite meaningless, (in Iliad, 
xxiv. 440,) when he drives Priam's chariot, and 
breathes force into his horses, precisely as we 
shall find Athena drive Diomed: and yet the 
serviceable and profitable sense, and something 
also of gentle and soothing character in the 
mere wool-softness, as used for dress, and reli- 
gious rites, is retained also in the epithet, and 
thus the gentle and serviceable Hermes is 
opposed to the deceitful one. 

28. In connection with this driving of 
Priam's chariot, remember that as Autolycus 
is the son of Hermes the Deceiver, Myrtilus 
(the Auriga of the Stars) is the son of Hermes 
the Guide. The name Hermes itself means 
Impulse ; and he is especially the shepherd of 
the flocks of the sky, in driving, or guiding, or 
stealing them ; and yet his great name, Argei- 
phontes, not only — as in different passages of 
the olden poets— means "Shining White," which 



42 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

is said of him as being himself the silver cloud 
lighted by the sun ; but '' Argus-Killer," the 
killer of brightness, which is said of him as he 
veils the sky, and especially the stars, which are 
the eyes of Argus ; or, literally, eyes of bright- 
ness, which Juno, who is, with Jupiter, part of 
the type of highest heaven, keeps in her pea- 
cock's train. We know that this interpretation 
is right, from a passage in which Euripides de- 
scries the shield of Hippomedon, which bore 
for its sign, "Argus the all-seeing, covered with 
eyes ; open towards the rising of the stars, and 
closed towards their setting." 

And thus Hermes becomes the spirit of the 
movement of the sky or firmament ; not merely 
the fast flying of the transitory cloud, but the 
great motion of the heavens and stars them- 
selves. Thus, in his highest power, he corre- 
sponds to the "primo mobile" of the later Italian 
philosophy, and, in his simplest, is the guide of 
all mysterious and cloudy movement, and of 
all successful subtleties. Perhaps the prettiest 
minor recognition of his character is when, on 
the night foray of Ulysses and Diomed, Ulysses 
wears the helmet stolen by Autolycus the son 
of Hermes. 



I, ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 43 

29. The position in the Greek mind of 
Hermes as the Lord of cloud is, however, more 
mystic and ideal than that of any other deity, 
just on account of the constant and real pre- 
sence of the cloud itself under different forms, 
giving rise to all kinds of minor fables. The 
play of the Greek imagination in this direction 
is so wide and complex, that I cannot even give 
you an outline of its range in my present limits. 
There is first a great series of storm-legends 
connected with the family of the historic ^olus, 
centralized by the story of Athamas, with his 
two wives " the Cloud " and the " White God- 
dess," ending in that of Phrixus and Helle, and 
of the golden fleece (which is only the cloud- 
burden of Hermes Eriophoros). With this, there 
is the fate of Salmoneus,* and the destruction 
of Glaucus by his own horses ; all these minor 
myths of storm concentrating themselves darkly 
into the legend of Bellerophon and the Chimaera, 
in which there is an under story about the vain 
subduing of passion and treachery, and the end 
of life in fading melancholy, — vyhich, I hope, not 
many of you could understand even were I to 

* OiHciv^ti]Si]Q Pind., Pyth., 4, 254, Conf. Lucian in 
Timor. 



44 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

show it you : (the merely physical meaning of 
the Chimaera is the cloud of volcanic lightning, 
connected wholly with earth- fire, but resembling 
the heavenly cloud in its height and its thunder). 
Finally, in the ^Eolic group, there is the legend of 
Sisyphus, which I mean to work out thoroughly 
by itself : its root is in the position of Corinth 
as ruling the isthmus and the two seas — the 
Corinthian Acropolis, two thousand feet high, 
being the centre of the crossing currents of the 
winds, and of the commerce of Greece. There- 
fore, Athena, and the fountain cloud Pegasus 
are more closely connected with Corinth than 
even with Athens in their material, though not 
in their moral power ; and Sishphus founds the 
Isthmian games in connection with a melancholy 
story about the sea gods ; but he himself is 
KepStaro^ dvhpiop, the most "gaining" and subtle 
of men : who, having the key of the Isthmus, 
becomes the type of transit, transfer, or trade, 
as such ; and of the apparent gain from it, 
which is not gain ; and this is the real meaning 
of his punishment in hell — eternal toil and recoil 
(the modern idol of capital being, indeed, the 
stone of Sisyphus with a vengeance, crushing 
in its recoil). But, throughout, the old ideas of 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 45 

the cloud power and cloud feebleness, — the 
deceit of its hiding, — and the emptiness of its 
vanishing, — the Autolycus enchantment of mak- 
ing black seem white, — and the disappointed 
fury of Ixion (taking shadow for power), mingle 
in the moral meaning of this and its collateral 
legends ; and give an aspect, at last, not only 
of foolish cunning, but of impiety or literal " ido- 
latry," "imagination worship," to the dreams of 
avarice and injustice, until this notion of atheism 
and insolent blindness becomes principal ; and 
the " Clouds " of Aristophanes, with the per- 
sonified "just" and "unjust" sayings in the 
latter part of the play, foreshadow, almost feature 
by feature, in all that they were written to mock 
and to chastise, the worst elements of the im- 
pious " Slvo<i " and tumult in men's thoughts, 
which have followed on their avarice in the 
present day, making them alike forsake the 
laws of their ancient gods, and misapprehend 
or reject the true words of their existing 
teachers. 

30. All this we have from the legends of the 
historic ^Eolus only ; but, besides these, there 
is the beautiful story of Semele, the mother of 
Bacchus. She is the cloud with the strength of 



46 THE gUEEN OF THE AIR. 

the vine in its bosom, consumed by the hght 
which matures the fruit ; the melting away of 
the cloud into the clear air at the fringe of its 
edges being exquisitely rendered by Pindar's 
epithet for her, Semele, " with the stretched- 
out hair " (javveOeLpa). Then there is the entire 
tradition of the Danaides, and of the tower of 
Danae and golden shower ; the birth of Perseus 
connecting this legend with that of the Gorgons 
and Graiae, who are the true clouds of thunder- 
ous and ruinous tempest. I must, in passing, 
mark for you that the form of the sword or 
sickle of Perseus, with which he kills Medusa, 
is another image of the whirling harpy vortex, 
and belongs especially to the sword of destruc- 
tion or annihilation ; whence it is given to the 
two angels who gather for destruction the evil 
harvest and evil vintage of the earth (Rev. xiv. 
15). I will collect afterwards and complete 
what I have already written respecting the 
Pegasean and Gorgonian legends, noting here 
only what is necessary to explain the central 
myth of Athena herself, who represents the 
ambient air, which included all cloud, and 
rain, and dew, and darkness, and peace, and 
wrath of heaven. Let me now try to give you. 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 4/ 

however briefly, some distinct idea of the several 
agencies of this great goddess. 

31. I. She is the air giving Hfe and health 
to all animals. 
II. She is the air giving vegetative power 
to the earth. 

III. She is the air giving motion to the sea, 
and rendering navigation possible. 

IV. She is the air nourishing artificial light, 
torch or lamplight ; as opposed to that 
of the sun, on one hand, and of con- 
stiming* fire on the other. 

V. She is the air conveying vibration of 
sound. 

I will give you instances of her agency in 
all these functions. 

32. First, and chiefly, she is air as the spirit 
of life, giving vitality to the blood. Her psychic 
relation to the vital force in matter lies deeper, 
and we will examine it afterwards ; but a great 
number of the most interesting passages in 
Homer regard her as flying over the earth in 
local and transitory strength, simply and merely 
the goddess of fresh air. 

* Not a scientific, but a very practical and expressive 
distinction. 



48 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

It is curious that the British city which has 
somewhat saucily styled itself the Modern 
Athens, is indeed more under her especial tute- 
lage and favour in this respect than perhaps any 
other town in the island, Athena is first simply 
what in the Modern Athens you so practically 
find her, the breeze of the mountain and the sea; 
and wherever she comes, there is purification, 
and health, and power. The sea-beach round 
this isle of ours is the frieze of our Parthenon ; 
every wave that breaks on it thunders with 
Athena's voice ; nay, whenever you throw your 
window wide open in the morning, you let in 
Athena, as wisdom and fresh air at the same 
instant ; and whenever you draw a pure, long, 
full breath of right heaven, you take Athena into 
your heart, through your blood ; and with the 
blood, into the thoughts of your brain. 

Now this giving of strength by the air, ob- 
serve, is mechanical as well as chemical. You 
cannot strike a good blow but with your chest 
full ; and in hand to hand fighting, it is not 
the muscle that fails first, it is the breath ; the 
longest-breathed will, on the average, be the 
victor, — not the strongest. Note how Shak- 
speare always leans on this. Of Mortimer, 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS, 49 

in "changing hardiment with great Glen- 
dower" : — 

"Three times they breathed, and three times did they drink, 
Upon agreement, of swift Severn's flood.' 

And again, Hotspur sending challenge to 
Prince Harry : — 

"That none might draw short breath to-day 
But I and Harry Monmouth." 

Again, of Hamlet^ before he receives his 
wound : — 

" He's fat, and scant of breath." 
Again, Orlando in the wrestling : — 

" Yes ; I beseech your grace 
I am TiOt yet well breathed." 

Now of all people that ever lived, the Greeks 
knew best what breath meant, both in exer- 
cise and in battle ; and therefore the queen of 
the air becomes to them at once the queen of 
bodily strength in war ; not mere brutal mus- 
cular strength, — that belongs to Ares, — but the 
strength of young lives passed in pure air and 
swift exercise,— Camilla's virginal force, that 
" flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along 
the main." 

4 



50 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

^^. Now I will rapidly give you two or three 
instances of her direct agency in this function. 
First, when she wants to make Penelope bright 
and beautiful; and to do away with the signs 
of her waiting and her grief " Then Athena 
thought of another thing; she laid her into deep 
sleep, and loosed all her limbs, and made her 
taller, and made her smoother, and fatter, and 
whiter than sawn ivory; and breathed ambrosial 
brightness over her face; and so she left her 
and went up to heaven." Fresh air and sound 
sleep at night, young ladies ! You see you may 
have Athena for lady's maid whenever you 
choose. Next, hark how she gives strength 
to Achilles when he is broken with fasting 
and grief. Jupiter pities him and says to her, 
—"'Daughter mine, are you forsaking your 
own soldier, and don't you care for Achilles any 
more ? see how hungry and weak he is, — go 
and feed him with ambrosia.' So he urged the 
eager Athena; and she leapt down out of heaven 
like a harpy falcon, shrill voiced ; and she 
poured nectar and ambrosia, full of delight, into 
the breast of AchilleSj that his limbs might not 
fail with famine : then she returned to the soHd 
dome of her strong father." And then comes 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS, 5 I 

the great passage about Achilles arming — for 
which we have no time. But here is again 
Athena giving strength to the whole Greek 
army. She came as a falcon to Achilles, straight 
at him ; — a sudden drift of breeze ; but to the 
army she must come widely, — she sweeps round 
them all. "As when Jupiter spreads the purple 
rainbow over heaven, portending battle or cold 
storm, so Athena, wrapping herself round with 
a purple cloud, stooped to the Greek soldiers, 
and raised up each of them." Note that purple, 
in Homer's use of it, nearly always means 
" fiery," " full of light." It is the light of the 
rainbow, not the colour of it, which Homer 
means you to think of. 

34. But the most curious passage of all, and 
fullest of meaning, is when she gives strength to 
Menelaus, that he may stand unwearied against 
Hector. He prays to her : " And blue-eyed 
Athena was glad that he prayed to her, first; 
and she gave him strength in his shoulders, and 
in his Hmbs, and she gave him the courage " 
— of what animal, do you suppose ? Had it 
been Neptune or Mars, they would have given 
him the courage of a bull, or Hon ; but Athena 
gives him the courage of the most fearless in 



52 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

attack of all creatures — small or great — and very 
small it is, but wholly incapable of terror, — she 
gives him the courage of a fly. 

35. Now this simile of Homer's is one of the 
best instances I can give you of the way in 
which great writers seize truths unconsciously 
which are for all time. It is only recent science 
which has completely shown the perfectness of 
this minute symbol of the power of Athena ; 
proving that the insect's flight and breath 
are co-ordinated ; that its wings are actually 
forcing pumps, of which the stroke compels the 
thoracic respiration ; and that it thus breathes 
and flies simultaneously by the action of the 
same muscles, so that respiration is carried 
on most vigorously during flight, " while the 
air-vessels, supplied by many pairs of lungs 
instead of one, traverse the organs of flight in 
far greater numbers than the capillary blood- 
vessels of our own system, and give enormous 
and untiring muscular power, a rapidity of 
action measured by thousands of strokes in the 
minute, and an endurance, by miles and hours 
of flight." * 

Homer could not have known this ; neither 

* Ormerod. Natural History of Wasps. 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 53 

that the buzzing of the fly was produced as in 
a wind instrument, by a constant current of air 
through the trachea. But he had seen, and, 
doubtless, meant us to remember, the marvellous 
strength and swiftness of the insect's flight (the 
glance of the swallow itself is clumsy and slow 
compared to the darting of common house-flies 
at play) ; he probably attributed its murmur to 
the wings, but in this also there was a type of 
what we shall presently find recognized in the 
name of Pallas, — the vibratory power of the air 
to convey sound, — while, as a purifying creature, 
the fly holds its place beside the old S3nTibol of 
Athena in Egypt, the vulture ; and as a venom- 
ous and tormenting creature, has more than 
the strength of the serpent in proportion to its 
size, being thus entirely representative of the 
influence of the air both in purification and 
pestilence ; and its courage is so notable that, 
strangely enough, forgetting Homer's simile, I 
happened to take the fly for an expression of 
the audacity of freedom in speaking of quite 
another subject.* Whether it should be called 
courage, or mere mechanical instinct, may be 
questioned, but assuredly no other animal, 
* See farther on, § 148, p. 199. 



54 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

exposed to continual danger, is so absolutely 
without sign of fear. 

36. You will, perhaps, have still patience to 
hear two instances, not of the communication of 
strength, but of the personal agency of Athena 
as the air. When she comes down to help 
Diomed against Ares, she does not come to fight 
instead of him, but she takes his charioteer's 
place. 

" She snatched the reins, she lashed with all her force. 
And full on Mars impelled the foaming horse." 

Ares is the first to cast his spear ; then, note 
this : — Pope says — 

" Pallas opposed her hand, and caused to glance. 
Far from the car, the strong immortal lance." 

She does not oppose her hand in the Greek, 
for the wind could not meet the lance straight. 
She catches it in her hand, and throws it off 
There is no instance in which a lance is so 
parried by a mortal hand in all the Iliad ; and 
it is exactly the way the wind would parry it, 
catching it and turning it aside. If there be 
any good rifleshots here, they know something 
about Athena's parrying — and in old times the 
English masters of feathered artillery knew 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 55 

more yet. Compare also the turning of Hector's 
lance from Achilles : Iliad xx. 439. 

37. The last instance I will give you is as lovely 
as it is subtle. Throughout the Iliad Athena is 
herself the will or Menis of Achilles. If he is 
to be calmed, it is she who calms him ; if an- 
gered, it is she who inflames him. In the first 
quarrel with Atrides, when he stands at pause, 
with the great sword half drawn, " Athena came 
from heaven, and stood behind him, and caught 
him by the yellow hair." Another god would 
have stayed his hand upon the hilt, but Athena 
only lifts his hair. " And he turned and knew 
her, and her dreadful eyes shone upon him." 
There is an exquisite tenderness in this laying 
her hand upon his hair, for it is the talisman of 
his life, vowed to his own Thessalian river if 
he ever returned to its shore, and cast upon 
Patroclus' pile, so ordaining that there should 
be no return. 

38. Secondly — Athena is the air giving vege- 
tative impulse to the earth. She is the wand 
and the rain — and yet more the pure air itself, 
getting at the earth fresh turned by spade or 
plough — and, above all, feeding the fresh leaves ; 
for though the Greeks knew nothing about 



56 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

carbonic acid, they did know that trees fed on 
the air. 

Now, note first in this, the myth of the air get- 
ting at ploughed ground. You know I told you 
the Lord of all labour by which man lived was 
Hephaestus ; therefore Athena adopts a child of 
his, and of the earth, — Erichthonius, — literally, 
*■ the tearer up of the ground" — who is the head 
(though not in direct line) of the kings of Attica ; 
and having adopted him, she gives him to be 
brought up by the three nymphs of the dew. Of 
these, Aglauros, the dweller in the fields, is the 
envy or malice of the earth; she answers nearly 
to the envy of Cain, the tiller of the ground, 
against his shepherd brother, in her own envy 
against her two sisters, Herse, the cloud dew, 
who is the beloved of the shepherd Mercury; and 
Pandrosos, the diffused dew, or dew of heaven. 
Literally, you have in this myth the words of 
the blessing of Esau — "Thy dwelling shall be 
of the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of 
heaven from above." Aglauros is for her envy 
turned into a black stone ; and hers is one of the 
voices, — the other being that of Cain, — which 
haunts the circle of env}^ in the Purgatory : — 
" lo sono Aglauro, chi divenne sasso." 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 5/ 

But to her two sisters, with Erichthonius, (or 
the hero Ercctheus,) is built the most sacred 
temple of Athena in Athens ; the temple to their 
own dearest Athena — to her, and to the dew 
together : so that it was divided into two parts : 
one, the temple of Athena of the city, and the 
other that of the dew. And this expression of 
her power, as the air bringing the dew to the 
hill pastures, in the central temple of the central 
city of the heathen, dominant over the future 
intellectual world, is, of all the facts connected 
with her worship as the spirit of life, perhaps 
the most important. I have no time now to 
trace for you the hundredth part of the differ- 
ent ways in which it bears both upon natural 
beauty, and on the best order and happiness of 
men's lives. I hope to follow out some of these 
trains of thought in gathering together what 
I have to say about field herbage; but I must 
say briefly here that the great sign, to the 
Greeks, of the coming of spring in the pastures, 
wa-j not, as with us, in the primrose, but in the 
various flowers of the asphodel tribe (of which 
I will give you some separate account pres- 
ently) ; therefore it is that the earth answers 
with crocus flame to the cloud on Ida ; and 



58 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

the power of Athena in eternal life is written 
by the light of the asphodel on the Elysian 
fields. 

But farther, Athena is the air, not only to the 
lilies of the field, but to the leaves of the forest. 
We saw before the reason why Hermes is said 
to be the son of Maia, the eldest of the sister 
stars of spring. Those stars are called not only 
Pleiades, but Vergiliae, from a word mingling 
the ideas of the turning or returning of spring- 
time with the out-pouring of rain. The mother 
of Virgil bearing the name of Maia, Virgil him- 
self received his name from the seven stars ; 
and he, in forming, first, the mind of Dante, and 
through him that of Chaucer (besides whatever 
special minor influence came from the Pastorals 
and Georgics), became the fountain-head of all 
the best literary power connected with the love 
of vegetative nature among civilized races of 
men. Take the fact for what it is worth ; still 
it is a strange seal of coincidence, in word and 
in reality, upon the Greek dream of the power 
over human life, and its purest thoughts, in the 
stars of spring. But the first syllable of the 
name of Virgil has relation also to another group 
of words, of which the English ones, virtue, and 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 59 

virgin, bring down the force to modern days. 
It is a group containing mainly the idea of 
" spring," or increase of life in vegetation— the 
rising of the new branch of the tree out of the 
bud, and of the new leaf out of the ground. It 
involves, secondarily, the idea of greenness and 
of strength, but primarily, that of living in- 
crease of a new rod from a stock, stem, or root ; 
("There shall come forth a rod out of the stem 
of Jesse ; ") and chiefly the stem of certain 
plants — either of the rose tribe, as in the bud- 
ding of the almond rod of Aaron; or of the 
olive tribe, which has triple significance in this 
symbolism, from the use of its oil for sacred 
anointing, for strength in the gymnasium, and 
for light. Hence, in numberless divided and re- 
flected ways, it is connected with the power of 
Hercules and Athena : Hercules plants the wild 
olive, for its shade, on the course of Olympia, 
and it thenceforward gives the Olympic crown, 
of consummate honour and rest ; while the 
prize at the Panathenaic games is a vase of its 
oil, (meaning encouragement to continuance of 
effort); and from the paintings on these Pana- 
thenaic vases we get the most precious clue 
to the entire character of Athena. Then to 



6o THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

express its propagation by slips, the trees from 
which the oil was to be taken were called 
"Moriai," trees of division (being all descendants 
of the sacred one in the Erechtheum). And 
thus, in one direction, we get to the " children 
like olive plants round about thy table " and 
the olive grafting of St. Paul ; while the use of 
the oil for anointing gives chief name to the 
rod itself of the stem of Jesse, and to all those 
who were by that name signed for his disciples 
first in Antioch. Remember, farther, since that 
name was first given, the influence of the .symbol, 
both in extreme unction, and in consecration of 
priests and kings to their "divine right"; and 
think, if you can reach with any grasp of thought, 
what the influence on the earth has been, of 
those twisted branches whose leaves give grey 
bloom to the hillsides under every breeze that 
blows from the midland sea. But, above and 
beyond all, think how strange it is that the chief 
Agonia of humanity, and the chief giving of 
strength from heaven for its fulfilment, should 
have been under its night shadow in Palestine. 

39. Thirdly — Athena is the air in its power 
over the sea. 

On the earliest Panathenaic vase known — 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 6 1 

the "Burgon" vase in the British Museum — 
Athena has a dolphin on her shield. The dol- 
phin has two principal meanings in Greek sym- 
bolism. It means, first, the sea; secondarily, the 
ascending and descending course of any of the 
heavenly bodies Irom one sea horizon to another 
— the dolphin's arching rise and re-plunge (in 
a summer evening, out of calm sea, their black 
backs roll round with exactly the slow motion 
of a water-wheel ; but I do not know how far 
Aristotle's exaggerated account of their leaping 
or their swiftness has any foundation,) being 
taken as a type of the emergence of the sun 
or stars from the sea in the east, and plunging 
beneath in the west. Hence, Apollo, when in his 
personal power he crosses the sea, leading his 
Cretan colonists to Pytho, takes the form of a 
dolphin, becomes Apollo Delphinius, and names 
the founded colony " Delphi." * The lovely 
drawing of the Delphic Apollo on the hydria of 
the Vatican (Le Normand and De Witte, vol. ii. 
p. 6), gives the entire conception of this myth. 
Again, the beautiful coins of Tarentum represent 
Taras coming to found the city, riding on a 
dolphin, whose leaps and plunges have partly 
* See Notes on Pindar, Pyth. iv. 



62 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

the rage of the sea in them, and partly the spring 
of the horse, because the splendid riding of the 
Tarentines had made their name proverbial in 
Magna Graecia. The story of Arion is a col- 
lateral fragment of the same thought ; and again, 
the plunge before their transformation, of the 
ships of iEneas. Then, this idea of career upon, 
or conquest of the sea, either by the creatures 
themselves, or by dolphin-like ships, (compare 
the Merlin prophecy,— 

" They shall ride 
Over ocean wide 
With hempen bridle, and horse of tree,") 

connects itself with the thought of undulation, 
and of the wave-power in the sea itself, which 
is always expressed by the serpentine bodies 
either of the sea-gods or of the sea-horse ; and 
when Athena carries, as she does often in later 
work, a serpent for her shield-sign, it is not so 
much the repetition of her own aegis-snakes as 
the farther expression of her power over the 
sea-wave ; which, finally, Virgil gives in its 
perfect unity with her own anger, in the ap- 
proach of the serpents against Laocoon from 
the sea : and then, finally, when her own storm- 
power is fully put forth on the ocean also, and 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 6^ 

the madness of the aegis-snake is given to the 
wave-snake, the sea-wave becomes the devour- 
ing hound at the waist of Scylla, and Athena 
takes Scylla for her helmet-crest ; while yet her 
beneficent and essential power on the ocean, in 
making navigation possible, is commemorated 
in the Panathenaic festival by her peplus being 
carried to the Erechtheum suspended from the 
mast of a ship. 

In Plate cxv. of vol. ii., Le Normand, are given 
two sides of a vase, which, in rude and childish 
way, assembles most of the principal thoughts 
regarding Athena in this relation. In the first the 
sunrise is represented by the ascending chariot 
of Apollo, foreshortened ; the light is supposed 
to blind the eyes, and no face of the god is seen. 
(Turner, in the Ulysses and Polyphemus sun- 
rise, loses the form of the god in light, giving 
the chariot-horses only ; rendering in his own 
manner, after 2,200 years of various fall and 
revival of the arts, precisely the same thought 
as the old Greek potter.) He ascends out of 
the sea ; but the sea itself has not yet caught the 
light. In the second design, Athena as the morn- 
ing breeze, and Hermes as the morning cloud, 
fly over the sea before the sun. Hermes turns 



64 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

back his head; his face is unseen in the cloud, 
as Apollo's in the light ; the grotesque appear- 
ance of an animal's face is only the cloud-phan- 
tasm modifying a frequent form of the hair of 
Hermes beneath the back of his cap. Under 
the morning breeze, the dolphins leap from the 
rippled sea, and their sides catch the light. 

The coins of the Lucanian Heracleia give 
a fair representation of the helmed Athena, as 
imagined in later Greek art, with the embossed 
Scylla. 

40. Fourthly — Athena is the air nourishing 
artificial light — unconsuming fire. Therefore, 
a lamp was always kept burning in the Erech- 
theum ; and the torch-race belongs chiefly to 
her festival, of which the meaning is to show 
the danger of the perishing of the light even 
by excess of the air that nourishes it : and so 
that the race is not to the swift, but to the wise. 
The household use of her constant light is sym- 
bolized in the lovely passage in the Odyssey, 
where Ulysses and his son move the armour 
while the servants are shut in their chambers, 
and there is no one to hold torches for them ; 
but Athena herself, " having a golden lamp," 
fills all the rooms with fight. Her presence 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 6$ 

in war-strength with her favourite heroes is 
always shown by the " unwearied " fire hover- 
ing on their hehnets and shields; and the image 
gradually becomes constant and accepted, both 
for the maintenance of household watchfulness, 
as in the parable of the ten virgins, or as the 
symbol of direct inspiration, in the rushing wind 
and divided llames of Pentecost : but, together 
with this thought of unconsuming and constant 
fire, there is always mingled in the Greek miind 
the sense of the consuming by excess, as of 
the flame by the air, so also of the inspired 
creature by its own fire (thus, again, " the zeal 
of thine house hath eaten me up " — " my zeal 
hath consumed me, because of thine enemies," 
and the Uke) ; and especially Athena has this 
aspect towards the truly sensual and bodily 
strength ; so that to Ares, who is himself insane 
and consuming, the opposite wisdom seems to 
be insane and consuming: "All we the other 
gods have thee against us, O Jove ! when we 
would give grace to men ; for thou hast begot- 
ten the maid without a mind — the mischievous 
creature, the doer of unseemly evil. All we 
obey thee, and are ruled by thee. Her only 
thou wilt not resist in anything she says or 

5 



66 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

does, because thou didst bear her — consuming- 
child as she is." 

41. Lastly — Athena is the air conveying vi- 
bration of sound. 

In all the loveliest representations in central 
Greek art of the birth of Athena, Apollo stands 
close to the sitting Jupiter, singing, with a deep, 
quiet joyfulness, to his lyre. The sun is always 
thought of as the master of time and rhythm, 
and as the origin of the composing and inven- 
tive discovery of melody ; but the air, as the 
actual element and substance of the voice, the 
prolonging and sustaining power of it, and 
the symbol of its moral passion. Whatever in 
music is measured and designed, belongs there- 
fore to Apollo and the Muses ; whatever is im- 
pulsive and passionate, to Athena : hence her 
constant strength of voice or cry (as when she 
aids the shout of Achilles) curiously opposed to 
the dumbness of Demeter. The ApoUine lyre, 
therefore, is not so much the instrument pro- 
ducing sound, as its measurer and divider b}' 
length or tension of string into given notes ; 
and I believe it is, in a double connection with 
its office as a measurer of time or motion, and 
its relation to the transit of the sun in the sky, 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. O'J 

that Hermes forms it from the tortoise-shell, 
which is the image of the dappled concave of 
the cloudy sky. Thenceforward all the limiting 
or restraining modes of music belong to the 
Muses ; but the passionate music is wind music, 
as in the Doric flute. Then, when this inspired 
music becomes degraded in its passion, it sinks 
into the pipe of Pan, and the double pipe of 
Marsyas, and is then rejected by Athena. The 
myth which represents her doing so is that she 
invented the double pipe from hearing the hiss 
of the Gorgonian serpents; but when she played 
upon it, chancing to see her face reflected in 
water, she saw that it was distorted, whereupon 
she threw down the flute, which Marsyas found. 
Then, the strife of Apollo and Marsyas repre- 
sents the enduring contest between music in 
which the words and thought lead, and the 
lyre measures or melodizes them, (which Pindar 
means when he calls his hymns "kings over 
the lyre,") and music in which the words are 
lost, and the wind or impulse leads, — generally, 
therefore, between intellectual, and brutal, or 
meaningless, music. Therefore, when Apollo 
prevails, he flays Marsyas, taking the limit and 
external bond of his shape from him, which 



68 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

is death, without touching the mere muscular 
strength ; yet shameful and dreadful in disso- 
lution. 

42. And the opposition of these two kinds of 
sound is continually dwelt upon by the Greek 
philosophers, the real fact at the root of all 
their teaching being this, — that true music is 
the natural expression of a lofty passion for a 
right cause ; that in proportion to the kingliness 
and force of any personality, the expression 
either of its joy or suffering becomes measured, 
chastened, calm, and capable of interpretation 
only by the majesty of ordered, beautiful, and 
worded sound. Exactly in proportion to the 
degree in which we become narrow in the cause 
and conception of our passions, incontinent in 
the utterance of them, feeble of perseverance 
in them, sullied or shameful in the indulgence 
of them, their expression by musical sound 
becomes broken, mean, fatuitous, and at last 
impossible ; the measured waves of the air of 
heaven will not lend themselves to expression 
of ultimate vice, it must be for ever sunk into 
discordance or silence. And since, as before 
stated, every work of right art has a tendency 
to reproduce the ethical state which first 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 69 

developed it, this, which of all the arts is most 
directly ethical in origin, is also the most direct 
in power of discipline ; the first, the simplest, 
the most effective of all instruments of moral 
instruction ; while in the failure and betrayal 
of its functions, it becomes the subtlest aid of 
moral degradation. Music is thus, in her health, 
the teacher of perfect order, and is the voice 
of the obedience of angels, and the companion 
of the course of the spheres of heaven ; and in 
her depravity she is also the teacher of perfect 
disorder and disobedience, and the Gloria in 
Excelsis becomes the Marseillaise. In the third 
section of this volume, I reprint two chapters 
from another essay of mine, ("The Cestus of 
Aglaia ") * on modesty or measure, and on 
liberty, containing farther reference to music in 
her two powers ; and I do this now, because, 
among the many monstrous and misbegotten 
fantasies which are the spawn of modern licence, 
perhaps the most impishly opposite to the truth 
is the conception of music which has rendered 
possible the writing, by educated persons, and, 

* "Art Journal," New Series, vols. iv. and v., 1S65-6. 
(Now included in the volumes of collected articles, published 
under the title of "On the Old Road.") 



7© THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

more strangely yet, the tolerant criticism, of 
such words as these : — " This so persuasive art 
is the only one that has no didactic efficacy, that 
engenders no emotions save sucJi as are without 
issue on the side of moral truth, that expresses 
nothing of God, nothing of reason, nothing of 
human liberty^ I will not give the author's 
name ; the passage is quoted in the Westminster 
Review for last January (1869), p. 153. 

43. I must also anticipate something of what 
I have to say respecting the relation of the 
power of Athena to organic life, so far as to 
note that her name, Pallas, probably refers to 
the quivering or vibration of the air ; and to its 
power, whether as vital force, or comrrunicated 
wave, over every kind of matter, in giving it 
vibratory movement ; first, and most intense, in 
the voice and throat of the bird ; which is the 
air incarnate ; and so descending through the 
various orders of animal life to the vibrating 
and semi-voluntary murmur of the insect ; and, 
lower still, to the hiss, or quiver of the tail, of 
the half-lunged snake and deaf adder; all these, 
nevertheless, being wholly under the rule of 
Athena as representing either breath, or vital 
nervous power ; and, therefore, also, in their 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. /I 

simplicity, the "oaten pipe and pastoral song/' 
which belong to her dominion over the asphodel 
meadows, and breathe on their banks of violets. 

Finally, is it not strange to think of the in- 
fluence of this one power of Pallas in vibration; 
(we shall see a singular mechanical energy of it 
presently in the serpent's motion ;) in the voices 
of war and peace ? How much of the repose 
— how much of the wrath, folly, and misery of 
men, has literally depended on this one power 
of the air ; — on the sound of the trumpet and 
of the bell — on the lark's song, and the bee's 
murmur ! 

44. Such is the general conception in the 
Greek mind of the physical power of Athena. 
The spiritual power associated with it is of 
two kinds : — first, she is the Spirit of Life in 
material organism ; not strength in the blood 
only, but formative energy in the clay : and, 
secondly, she is inspired and impulsive wisdom 
in human conduct and human art, giving the 
instinct of infallible decision, and of faultless 
invention. 

It is quite beyond the scope of my present 
purpose — and, indeed, will only be possible for 
me at all after marking the relative intention of 



72 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

the Apolline myths — to trace for you the Greek 
conception of Athena as the guide of moral 
passion. But I will at least endeavour, on some 
near occasion,* to define some of the actual 
truths respecting the vital force in created or- 
ganism, and inventive fancy in the works of 
man, which are more or less expressed by the 
Greeks, under the personality of Athena. You 
would, perhaps, hardly bear with me if I endea- 
voured farther to show you — what is neverthe- 
less perfectly true — the analogy between the 
spiritual power of Athena in her gentle minis- 
try, yet irresistible anger, with the ministry of 
another Spirit whom we also, believing in as 
the universal power of life, are forbidden, at our 
worst peril, to quench or to grieve. 

45. But, I think, to-night, you should not let 
me close, without requiring of me an answer 
on one vital point, namely, how far these ima- 
ginations of Gods — which are vain to us — 
were vain to those who had no better trust ? 
and what real belief the Greek had in these 
creations of his own spirit, practical and helpful 
to him in the sorrow of earth ? I am able to 

* I have tried to do this in mere outline in the two 
following sections of this volume. 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 73 

answer you explicitly in this. The origin of 
his thoughts is often obscure, and we may err 
in endeavouring to account for their form of 
realization ; but the effect of that realization on 
his life is not obscure at all. The Greek creed 
was, of course, different in its character, as our 
own creed is, according to the class of persons 
who held it. The common people's was quite 
literal, simple, and happy : their idea of Athena 
was as clear as a good Roman Catholic pea- 
sant's idea of the Madonna. In Athens itself, 
the centre of thought and refinement, Pisistra- 
tus obtained the reins of government through 
the ready belief of the populace that a beautiful 
woman, armed like Athena, was the goddess 
herself. Even at the close of the last century 
some of this simplicity remained among the 
inhabitants of the Greek islands ; and when a 
pretty English lady first made her way into the 
grotto of Antiparos, she was surrounded, on 
her return, by all the women of the neigh- 
bouring village, believing her to be divine, and 
praying her to heal them of their sicknesses. 

46. Then, secondly, the creed of the upper 
classes was more refined and spiritual, but quite 
as honest, and even more forcible in its effect 



74 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

on the life. You might imagine that the em- 
ployment of the artifice just referred to implied 
utter unbelief in the persons contriving it ; but 
it really meant only that the more worldly of 
them would play with a popular faith for their 
own purposes, as doubly-minded persons have 
often done since, all the while sincerely holding 
the same ideas themselves in a more abstract 
form ; while the good and unworldly men, the 
true Greek heroes, lived by their faith as firmly 
as S. Louis, or the Cid, or the Chevalier Bayard. 
47. Then, thirdly, the faith of the poets and 
artists was, necessarily, less definite, being con- 
tinually modified by the involuntary action of 
their own fancies ; and by the necessity of pre- 
senting, in clear verbal or material form, things 
of which they had no authoritative knowledge. 
Their faith was, in some respects, like Dante's 
or Milton's : firm in general conception, but not 
able to vouch for every detail in the forms they 
gave it : but they went considerably farther, 
even in that minor sincerity, than subsequent 
poets ; and strove with all their might to be as 
near the truth as they could. Pindar says, quite 
simply, "I cannot think so-and-so of the Gods. 
It must have been this way — it cannot have 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 75 

been that way — that the thing was done," And 
as late among the Latins as the days of Horace, 
this sincerity remains. Horace is just as true 
and simple in his religion as Wordsworth ; but 
all power of understanding any of the honest 
classic poets has been taken away from most 
English gentlemen by the mechanical drill in 
verse-writing at school. Throughout the whole 
of their lives afterwards, they never can get 
themselves quit of the notion that all verses 
were written as an exercise, and that Minerva 
was only a convenient word for the last of an 
hexameter, and Jupiter for the last but one. 

48. It is impossible that any notion can be 
more fallacious or more misleading in its con- 
sequences. All great song, from the first day 
when human lips contrived syllables, has been 
sincere song. With deliberate didactic purpose 
the tragedians — with pure and native passion 
the lyrists — fitted their perfect words to their 
dearest faiths. " Operosa parvus carmina fingo." 
" I, little thing that I am, weave my laborious 
songs " as earnestly as the bee among the bells 
of thyme on the Matin mountains. Yes, and he 
dedicates his favourite pine to Diana, and he 
chants his autumnal hymn to Faunus guarding 



'jG THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

his fields, and he guides the noble youths and 
maids of Rome in their choir to Apollo, and he 
tells the farmer's little girl that the Gods will 
love her, though she has only a handful of salt 
and meal to give them — ^just as earnestly as 
ever English gentleman taught Christian faith 
to English youth, in England's truest days. 

49. Then, lastly, the creed of the philoso- 
phers or sages varied according to the character 
and knowledge of each ; — their relative acquain- 
tance with the secrets of natural science — their 
intellectual and sectarian egotism — and their 
mystic or monastic tendencies, for there is 
a classic as well as a mediaeval monasticism. 
They ended in losing the life of Greece in play 
upon words ; but we owe to their early thought 
some of the soundest ethics, and the founda- 
tion of the best practical laws, yet known to 
mankind. 

50. Such was the general vitality of the 
heathen creed in its strength. Of its direct 
influence on conduct, it is, as I said, impossible 
for me to speak now ; only, remember always, 
in endeavouring to form a judgment of it, that 
what of good or right the heathens did, they did 
looking for no reward. The purest forms of our 



I. ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. // 

own religion have always consisted in sacri- 
ficing less things to win greater; — time, to win 
eternity, — the world, to win the skies. The 
order, " sell that thou hast," is not given with- 
out the promise, — "thou shalt have treasure in 
heaven ; " and well for the modern Christian if 
he accepts the alternative as his Master left it 
— and does not practically read the command 
and promise thus : " Sell that thou hast in the 
best market, and thou shalt have treasure in 
eternity also." But the poor Greeks of the 
great ages expected no reward from heaven but 
honour, and no reward from earth but rest ; 
— though, when, on those conditions, they pa- 
tiently, and proudly, fulfilled their task of the 
granted day, an unreasoning instinct of an 
immortal benediction broke from their lips in 
song : and they, even they, had sometimes a 
prophet to tell them of a land " where there is 
sun alike by day, and alike by night-»-where 
they shall need no more to trouble the earth 
by strength of hands for daily bread — but the 
ocean breezes blow around the blessed islands, 
and golden flowers burn on their bright trees 
for evermore." 



IL 

ATHENA KERAMITIS.* 
{Athena in the Earth.) 

Study, supplementary to the preceding lecture, of the supposed, 
and actual, relations of Athena to the vital force in 
material organism. 

51. It has been easy to decipher approxi- 
mately the Greek conception of the physical 
power of Athena in cloud and sky, because we 
know ourselves what clouds and skies are, and 
what the force of the wind is in forming them. 
But it is not at all easy to trace the Greek 
thoughts about the power of Athena in giving 
life, because we do not ourselves know clearly 
what life is, or in what way the air is necessary 
to it, or what there is, besides the air, shaping 
the forms that it is put into. And it is compa- 
ratively of small consequence to find out what 

* " Athena, fit for being made into pottery." I coin the 
expression as a counterpart of 7^ wapdivia, "Clay intact." 



II. ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 79 

the Greeks thought or meant, until we have 
determined what we ourselves think, or mean, 
when we translate the Greek word for " breath- 
ing" into the Latin-English word "spirit." 

52. But it is of great consequence that you 
should fix in your minds — and hold, against the 
baseness of mere materialism on the one hand, 
and against the fallacies of controversial specu- 
lation on the other — the certain and practical 
sense of this word "spirit"; — the sense in which 
you may all know that its reality exists, as the 
power which shaped you into your shape, and 
by which you love, and hate, when you have 
received that shape. You need not fear, on 
the one hand, that either the sculpturing or the 
loving power can ever be beaten down by the 
philosophers into a metal or evolved by them 
into a gas : but, on the other hand, take care 
that you yourselves, in trying to elevate your 
conception of it, do not lose its truth in a dream, 
or even in a word. Beware always of contend- 
ing for words : you will find them not easy to 
grasp, if you know them in several languages. 
This very word, which is so solemn in your 
mouths, is one of the most doubtful. In Latin 
it means little more than breathing, and may 



80 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

mean merely accent ; in French it is not 
breath, but wit, and our neighbours are there- 
fore obliged, even in their most solemn ex- 
pressions, to say "wit" when we say "ghost." 
In Greek, "pneuma," the word we translate 
"ghost," means either wind or breath, and the 
relative word "psyche" has, perhaps, a more 
subtle power; yet St. Paul's words "pneumatic 
body" and "psychic body" involve a difference 
in his mind which no words will explain. But 
in Greek and in English, and in Saxon and 
in Hebrew, and in every articulate tongue of 
humanity, the " spirit of man " truly means his 
passion and virtue, and is stately according to 
the height of his conception, and stable accord- 
ing to the measure of his endurance. 

53. Endurance, or patience, that is the central 
sign of spirit ; a constancy against the cold and 
agony of death ; and as, physically, it is by the 
burning power of the air that the heat of the 
flesh is sustained, so this Athena, spiritually, 
is the queen of all glowing virtue, the uncon- 
suming fire and inner lamp of life. And thus, 
as Hephaestus * is lord of the fire of the hand, 
and Apollo of the fire of the brain, so Athena 
* Vulcan (mulciber). 



11. ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 8l 

of the fire of the heart ; and as Hercules wears 
for his chief armour the sivin of the Nemean 
Hon, his chief enemy, whom he slew ; and 
Apollo has for his highest name " the Pythian," 
from his chief enemy, the Python, slain ; so 
Athena bears always on her breast the deadly 
face of her chief enemy slain, the Gorgonian 
cold, and venomous agony, that turns living 
men to stone. 

54. And so long as you have that fire of the 
heart within you, and know the reality of it, you 
need be under no alarm as to the possibility of 
its chemical or mechanical analysis. The philo- 
sophers are very humorous in their ecstasv of 
hope about it ; but the real interest of their dis- 
coveries in this direction is very small to human 
kind. It is quite true that the tympanum of the 
ear vibrates under sound, and that the surface 
of the water in a ditch vibrates too : but the 
ditch hears nothing for all that ; and my hear- 
ing is still to me as blessed a mystery as ever, 
and the interval between the ditch and me, 
quite as great. If the trembling sound in my 
ears was once of the marriage bell which began 
my happiness, and is now of the passing-bell 
which ends it, the difference between those two 

6 



82 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

sounds to me cannot be counted by the number 
of concussions. There have been some curious 
speculations lately as to the conveyance of 
mental consciousness by " brain- waves." What 
does it matter how it is conveyed ? The con- 
sciousness itself is not a wave. It may be 
accompanied here or there by any quantity of 
quivers and shakes, up or down, of anything 
you can find in the universe that is shakeable 
— what is that to me ? My friend is dead, and 
my — according to modern views — vibratory 
sorrow is not one whit less, or less mysterious 
to me, than my old quiet one. 

55. Beyond, and entirely unaffected by, any 
questionings of this kind, there are, therefore, 
two plain facts which we should all know : first, 
that there is a power which gives their several 
shapes to things, or capacities of shape ; and, 
secondly, a power which gives them their several 
feelings, or capacities of feeling ; and that we 
can increase or destroy both of these at our 
will. By care and tenderness, we can extend 
the range of lovely life in plants and animals ; 
by our neglect and cruelty, we can arrest it, and 
bring pestilence in its stead. Again, by right 
discipline we can increase our strength of noble 



II. ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 8^ 

will and passion, or destroy both. And whether 
these two force.s are local conditions of the 
elements in which they appear, or are part of 
a great force in the universe, out of which they 
are taken, and to which they must be restored, 
is not of the slightest importance to us in deal- 
ing with them ; neither is the manner of their 
connection with light and air. What precise 
meaning we ought to attach to expressions such 
as that of the prophecy to the four winds that 
the dry bones might be breathed upon, and 
might live, or why the presence of the vital 
power should be dependent on the chemical 
action of the air, and its awful passing away 
materially signified by the rendering up of that 
breath or ghost, we cannot at present know, 
and need not at any time dispute. What we 
assuredly know is that the states of life and 
death are different, and the first more desirable 
than the other, and by effort attainable, whether 
we understand being " born of the spirit " to 
signify having the breath of heaven in our flesh, 
or its power in our hearts. r 

56. As to its power on the body, I will endea- 
vour to tell you, having been myself much led 
into studies involving necessary reference both 



84 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

to natural science and mental phenomena, what, 
at least, remains to us after science has done 
its worst ; — what the Myth of Athena, as a 
Formative and Decisive power — a Spirit of 
Creation and Volition, — must eternally mean 
for all of us. 

57. It is now (I believe I may use the strong 
word) "ascertained" that heat and motion are 
fixed in quantity, and measurable in the portions 
that we deal with. We can measure out por- 
tions of power, as we can measure portions of 
space; while yet, as far as we know, space may 
be infinite, and force infinite. There may be 
heat as much greater than the sun's, as the 
sun's heat is greater than a candle's ; and force 
as much greater than the force by which the 
world swings, as that is greater than the force 
by which a cobweb trembles. Now, on heat 
and force, life is inseparably dependent ; and I 
beheve, also, on a form of substance, which 
the philosophers call " protoplasm." I wish 
they would use English instead of Greek words. 
When I want to know why a leaf is green, they 
tell me it is coloured by " chlorophyll," which 
at first sounds very instructive ; but if they 
would only say plainly that a leaf is coloured 



II. ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 85 

green by a thing which is called " green leaf," 
we should see more precisely how far we had 
got. However, it is a curious fact that life is 
connected with a cellular structure called pro- 
toplasm, or, in English, " first stuck together : " 
whence conceivably through deutoroplasms, or 
second stickings, and tritoplasms, or third stick- 
ings,* we reach the highest plastic phase in 
the human pottery, which differs from common 
china-ware, primarily, by a measurable degree 
of heat, developed in breathing, which it bor- 
rows from the rest of the universe while it lives, 
and which it as certainly returns to the rest of 
the universe, when it dies. 

58. Again, with this heat certain assimilative 
powers are connected, which the tendency of 
recent discovery is to simplify more and more 



* Or, perhaps, we may be indulged with one consum- 
mating gleam of " glycasm " —visible " Sweetness," — accord- 
ing to the good old monk " Full moon," or " All moon- 
shine." I cannot get at his original Greek, but am content 
with M. Durand's clear French (Manuel d'lconographie 
Chretienne. Paris, 1845): — " Lorsque vous aurez fait le 
proplasme, et esquisse un visage, vous ferez les chairs avec 
le glycasme dont nous avons donne la recette. Chez les 
vicillards, vous indiquerez les rides, et chez les jeuncs gens, 
les angles des yeux. C'est ainsi que Ion fait les chairs, 
suivant Panselinos." 



86 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

into modes of one force ; or finally into mere 
motion, communicable in various states, but not 
destructible. We will assume that science has 
done its utmost ; and that every chemical or 
animal force is demonstrably resolvable into 
heat or motion, reciprocally changing into each 
other. I would myself like better, in order of 
thought, to consider motion as a mode of heat 
than heat as a mode of motion ; still, granting 
that we have got thus far, we have yet to ask, 
What is heat ? or what, motion ? What is 
this " primo mobile," this transitional power, in 
which all things live, and move, and have their 
being ? It is by definition something different 
from matter, and we may call it as we choose 
— " first cause," or " first light," or " first heat " ; 
but we can show no scientific proof of its not 
being personal, and coinciding with the ordinary 
conception of a supporting spirit in all things. 

59. Still, it is not advisable to apply the word 
" spirit " or " breathing " to it, while it is only 
enforcing chemical affinities ; but, when the 
chemical affinities are brought under the influ- 
ence of the air, and of the sun's heat, the for- 
mative force enters an entirely different phase. 
It does not now merely crystallize indefinite 



II. ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 87 

masses, but it gives to limited portions of mat- 
ter the power of gathering, selectively, other 
elements proper to them, and binding these 
elements into their own peculiar and adopted 
form. 

This force, now properly called life, or breath- 
ing, or spirit, is continually creating its own 
shells of definite shape out of the wreck around 
it : and this is what I meant by saying, in 
the " Ethics of the Dust" : — "you may always 
stand by form against force." For the mere 
force of junction is not spirit ; but the power 
that catches out of chaos charcoal, water, lime, 
or what not, and fastens them down into a given 
form, is properly called " spirit " ; and we shall 
not diminish, but strengthen our conception of 
this creative energy by recognizing its presence 
in lower states of matter than our own ; — such 
recognition being enforced upon us by a delight 
we instinctively receive from all the forms of 
matter which manifest it : and 3^et more, by the 
glorifying of those forms, in the parts of them 
that are most animated, with the colours that are 
pleasantest to our senses. The most familiar 
instance of this is the best, and also the most 
wonderful : — the blossoming of plants. 



88 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

60. The Spirit in the plant — that is to say, 
its power of gathering dead matter out of the 
wreck round it, and shaping it into its own 
chosen shape, — is of course strongest at the 
moment of its flowering, for it then not only 
gathers, but forms, with the greatest energy. 

And where this Life is in it at full power, 
its form becomes invested with aspects that are 
chiefly delightful to our own human passions ; 
namely, first, with the loveliest outlines of 
shape : and, secondly, with the most brilliant 
phases of the primary colours, blue, yellow, and 
red or white, the unison of all ; and, to make 
it all more strange, this time of peculiar and 
perfect glory is associated with relations of the 
plants or blossoms to each other, correspondent 
to the. joy of love in human creatures, and 
having the same object in the continuance of 
the race. Only, with respect to plants, as 
animals, we are wrong in speaking as if the 
object of this strong life were only the bequeath- 
ing of itself The flower is the end or proper 
object of the seed, not the seed of the flower. 
The reason for seeds is that flowers may be ; 
not the reason of flowers that seeds may be. 
The flower itself is the creature which the spirit 



11. ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 89 

makes ; only, in connection with its perfectness, 
is placed the giving birth to its successor. 

61. The main fact, then, about a flower is 
that it is the part of the plant's form developed 
at the moment of its intensest life : and this 
inner rapture is usually marked externally for 
us by the flush of one or more of the primary 
colours. What the character of the flow-er 
shall be, depends entirely upon the portion of 
the plant into which this rapture of spirit has 
been put. Sometimes the life is put into its 
outer sheath, and then the outer sheath becomes 
white and pure, and full of strength and grace ; 
sometimes the life is put into the common leaves, 
just under the blossom, and they become scarlet 
or purple ; sometimes the life is put into the 
stalks of the flower, and they flush blue ; some- 
times in its outer enclosure or calyx ; mostly 
into its inner cup ; but in all cases, the presence 
of the strongest life is asserted by characters 
in which the human sight takes pleasure, and 
which seem prepared with distinct reference to 
us, or rather, bear, in being delightful, evidence 
of having been produced by the power of the 
same spirit as our own. 

62. And we are led to feel this still more 



90 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

strongly, because all the distinctions of species,* 
both in plants and animals, appear to have simi- 
lar connection with human character. What- 
ever the origin of species may be, or however 
those species, once formed, may be influenced 
by external accident, the groups into which 
birth or accident reduce them have distinct 
relation to the spirit of man. It is perfectly 
possible, and ultimately conceivable, that the 
crocodile and the lamb may have descended 
from the same ancestral atom of protoplasm ; 
and that the physical laws of the operation of 
calcareous slime and of meadow grass, on that 
protoplasm, may in time have developed the 
opposite natures and aspects of the living 
frames ; but the practically important fact for 
us is the existence of a power which creates 
that calcareous earth itself; — which creates that, 
separately, and quartz, separately, and gold, 
separately, and charcoal, separately ; and then 

* The facts on which I am about to dwell are in nowise 
antagonistic to the theories which Mr. Darwin's unwearied 
and unerring investigations are every day rendering more 
probable. The aesthetic relations of species are independent 
of their origin. Nevertheless, it has always seemed to me, 
in what little work 1 have done upon organic forms, as if the 
species mocked us by their deliberate imitation of each other 
when they met : yet did not pass one into another. 



II. ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 9 1 

.SO directs the relations of these elements that 
the gold may destroy the souls of men by being 
yellow ; and the charcoal destroy their souls by 
being hard and bright ; and the quartz represent 
to them an ideal purity ; and the calcareous 
earth, soft, may beget crocodiles, and dry and 
hard, sheep ; and that the aspects and qualities 
of these two products, crocodiles and lambs, 
may be, the one repellent to the spirit of man, 
the other attractive to it, in a quite inevitable 
way, representing to him states of moral evil and 
good, and becoming myths to him of destruction 
or redemption, and, in the most literal sense, 
" Words " of God. 

63. And the force of these facts cannot be 
escaped from by the thought that there are 
species innumerable, passing into each other by 
regular gradations, out of which we choose what 
we most love or dread, and say they were indeed 
prepared for us. Species are not innumerable ; 
neither are they now connected by consistent 
gradation. They touch at certain points only ; 
and even then are connected, when we examine 
them deeply, in a kind of reticulated way, not 
in chains, but in chequers ; also, however con- 
nected, it is but by a touch of the extremities, 



92 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

as it were, and the characteristic form of the 
species is entirely individual. The rose nearly 
sinks into a grass in the sanguisorba ; but the 
formative spirit does not the less clearly separate 
the ear of wheat from the dog-rose, and oscillate 
with tremulous constancy round the central 
forms of both, having each their due relation 
to the mind of man. The great animal king- 
doms are connected in the same way. The bird 
through the penguin drops towards the fish, 
and the fish in the cetacean reascends to the 
mammal, yet there is no confusion of thought 
possible between the perfect forms of an eagle, 
a trout, and a war-horse, in their relations to 
the elements, and to man. 

64. Now we have two orders of animals to 
take some note of in connection with Athena, 
and one vast order of plants, which will illus- 
trate this matter very sufficiently for us. 

The two orders of animals are the serpent 
and the bird ; the serpent, in which the breath, 
or spirit, is less than in any other creature, and 
the earth-power greatest : — the bird, in which 
the breath, or spirit, is more full than in any 
other creature, and the earth-power least. 

65. We will take the bird first. It is httle 



II. ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 93 

more than a drift of the air brought into form 
by plumes ; the air is in all its quills, it breathes 
through its whole frame and flesh, and glows 
with air in its flying, like a blown flame : it rests 
upon the air, subdues it, surpasses it, outraces 
it ; — is the air, conscious of itself, conquering 
itself, ruling itself. 

Also, into the throat of the bird is given the 
voice of the air. All that in the wind itself is 
weak, wild, useless in sweetness, is knit together 
in its song. As we may imagine the wild form 
of the cloud closed into the perfect form of the 
bird's wings, so the wild voice of the cloud into 
its ordered and commanded voice ; unwearied, 
rippling through the clear heaven in its glad- 
ness, interpreting all intense passion through 
the soft spring nights, bursting into acclaim 
and rapture of choir at daybreak, or lisping 
and twittering among the boughs and hedges 
through heat of day, like little winds that only 
make the cowslip bells shake, and ruffle the 
petals of the wild rose. 

66. Also, upon the plumes of the bird are put 
the colours of the air : on these the gold of the 
cloud, that cannot be gathered by any covetous- 
ness ; the rubies of the clouds, that are not the 



94 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

price of Athena, but are Athena ; the vermilion 
of the cloud-bar, and the flame of the cloud- 
crest, and the snow of the cloud, and its shadow, 
and the melted blue of the deep wells of the 
sky — all these, seized by the creating spirit, and 
woven by Athena herself into films and threads 
of plume ; with wave on wave following and 
fading along breast, and throat, and opened 
wings, infinite as the dividing of the foam and 
the sifting of the sea-sand ; — even the white 
down of the cloud seeming to flutter up be- 
tween the stronger plumes, seen, but too soft 
for touch. 

And so the Spirit of the Air is put into, and 
upon, this created form; and it becomes, through 
twenty centuries, the symbol of Divine help, 
descending, as the Fire, to speak, but as the 
Dove, to bless. 

67. Next, in the serpent we approach the 
source of a group of myths, world-wide, founded 
on great and common human instincts, respect- 
ing which I must note one or two points which 
bear intimately on all our subject. For it seems 
to me that the scholars who are at present occu- 
pied in interpretation of human myths have 
most of them forgotten that there are any such 



II. ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 95 

things as natural myths ; and that the dark say- 
ings of men may be both difficult to read, and 
not always worth reading ; but the dark sayings 
of nature will probably become clearer for the 
looking into, and will very certainly be worth 
reading. And, indeed, all guidance to the right 
sense of the human and variable myths will pro- 
bably depend on our first getting at the sense 
of the natural and invariable ones. The dead 
hieroglyph may have meant this or that — the 
living hieroglyph means always the same; but 
remember, it is just as much a hieroglyph as 
the other ; nay, more, — a " sacred or reserved 
sculpture," a thing with an inner language. 
The serpent crest of the king's crown, or of 
the god's, on the pillars of Egypt, is a mystery ; 
but the serpent itself, gliding past the pillar's 
foot, is it less a mystery ? Is there, indeed, no 
tongue, except the mute forked flash from its 
lips, in that running brook of horror on the 
ground ? 

68. Why that horror? We all feel it, yet 
how imaginative it is, how disproportioned to 
the real strength of the creature ! There is 
more poison in an ill-kept drain, — in a pool of 
dish-washings at a cottage door, — than in the 



96 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

deadliest asp of Nile. Every back-yard which 
you look down into from the railway, as it 
carries you out by Vauxhall or Deptford, holds 
its coiled serpent : all the walls of those ghastly 
suburbs are enclosurers of tank temples for ser- 
pent worship ; yet you feel no horror in looking 
down into them, as you would if you saw the 
livid scales, and lifted head. There is more 
venom, mortal, inevitable, in a single word 
sometimes, or in the gliding entrance of a word- 
less thought, than ever " vanti Libia con sua 
rena." But that horror is of the myth, not of 
the creature. There are myriads lower than 
this, and more loathsome, in the scale of being ; 
the links between dead matter and animation 
drift everywhere unseen. But it is the strength 
of the base element that is so dreadful in the 
serpent ; it is the very omnipotence of the earth. 
That rivulet of smooth silver — how does it flow, 
think you ? It literally rows on the earth, with 
every scale for an oar; it bites the dust with 
the ridges of its body. Watch it, when it moves 
slowly :— A wave, but without wind ! a current, 
but with no fall ! all the body moving at the 
same instant, yet some of it to one side, some 
to another, or some forward, and the rest of the 



II. ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 97 

coil backwards ; but all with the same calm will 
and equal way — no contraction, no extension ; 
one soundless, causeless march of sequent rings, 
and spectral procession of spotted dust, with 
dissolution in its fangs, dislocation in its coils. 
Startle it ; — the winding stream will become a 
twisted arrow ; — the wave of poisoned life will 
lash through the grass Hke a cast lance.* It 
scarcely breathes with its one lung (the other 
shrivelled and abortive); it is passive to the 
sun and shade, and is cold or hot like a stone ; 
yet, "it can outclimb the monkey, outswim the 
fish, outleap the zebra, outwrestle the athlete, 

* I cannot understand this swift forward motion of ser- 
pents. The seizure of prey by the constrictor, though 
invisibly swift, is quite simple in mechanism ; it is simply 
the return to its coil of an opened watchspring, and is just 
as instantaneous. But the steady and continuous motion, 
without a visible fulcrum (for the whole body moves at the 
same instant, and I have often seen even small snakes glide 
as fast as I could walk), seems to involve a vibration of the 
scales quite too rapid to be conceived. The motion of the 
crest and dorsal fin of the hippocampus, which is one of 
the intermediate types between serpent and fish, perhaps 
gives some resemblance of it, dimly visible, for the quivering 
turns the fin into a mere mist. The entrance of the two barbs 
of a bee's sting by alternate motion, "the teeth of one 
barb acting as a fulcrum for the other," must be something 
like the serpent motion on a small scale. (Note of 1883. Cp. 
the Lecture "A Caution to Snakes," 'Deucalion,' Part VII.) 



98 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

and crush the tiger." * It is a divine hiero- 
glyph of the demoniac power of the earth, — of 
the entire earthly nature. As the bird is the 
clothed power of the air, so this is the clothed 
power of the dust ; as the bird the symbol of 
the spirit of life, so this of the grasp and sting 
of death. 

69. Hence the continual change in the in- 
terpretation put upon it in various religions. As 
the worm of corruption, it is the mightiest of 
all adversaries of the gods — the special adver- 
sary of their light and creative power — Python 
against Apollo. As the power of the earth 
against the air, the giants are serpent-bodied 
in the Gigantomachia ; but as the power of the 
earth upon the seed — consuming it into new 
life (" that which thou sowest is not quickened 
except it die") — serpents sustain the chariot of 
the spirit of agriculture. 

70. Yet, on the other hand, there is a power 
in the earth to take away corruption, and to 
purify, (hence the very fact of burial, and many 
uses of earth, only lately known); and in this 
sense, the serpent is a healing spirit, — the re- 
presentative of ^sculapius, and of Hygieia ; 

* Richard Owen, 



II. ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 99 

and is a sacred earth-type in the temple of the 
Dew ; — being there especially a symbol of the 
native earth of Athens ; so that its departure 
from the temple was a sign to the Athenians 
that they were to leave their homes. And then, 
lastly, as there is a strength and healing in the 
earth, no less than the strength of air, so there 
is conceived to be a wisdom of earth no less 
than a wisdom of the spirit ; and when its 
deadly power is killed, its guiding power be- 
comes true ; so that the Python serpent is killed 
at Delphi, where yet the oracle is from the 
breath of the earth. 

71. You must remember, however, that in 
this, as in every other instance, I take the myth 
at its central time. This is only the meaning 
of the serpent to the Greek mind which could 
conceive an Athena. Its first meaning to the 
nascent eyes of men, and its continued influence 
over degraded races, are subjects of the most 
fearful mystery. Mr. Fergusson has just col- 
lected the principal evidence bearing on the 
matter in a work of very great value, and if 
you read his opening ' chapters, they will put 
you in possession of the circumstances needing 
chiefly to be considered. I cannot touch upon 



100 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

any of them here, except only to point out that, 
though the doctrine of the so-called " corruption 
of human nature," asserting that there is nothing 
but evil in humanity, is just as blasphemous and 
false as a doctrine of the corruption of physical 
nature would be, asserting there was nothing 
but evil in the earth, — there is yet the clearest 
evidence of a disease, plague, or cretinous im- 
perfection of development, hitherto allowed to 
prevail against the greater part of the races of 
men ; and this in monstrous ways, more full 
of mystery than the serpent-being itself. I 
have gathered for you to-night only instances 
of what is beautiful in Greek religion ; but even 
in its best time there were deep corruptions in 
other phases of it, and degraded forms of many 
of its deities, all originating in a misunderstood 
worship of the principle of life ; while in the 
religions of lower races, little else than these 
corrupted forms of devotion can be found ; — all 
having a strange and dreadful consistency with 
each other, and infecting Christianity, even at 
its strongest periods, with fatal terror of doc- 
trine, and ghastliness of symbolic conception, 
passing through fear in^o frenzied grotesque, 
and thence into sensualit3^ 



II. ATHENA IN THE EARTH. lOI 

In the Psalter of S. Louis itself, half of its 
letters are twisted snakes; there is scarcely a 
wreathed ornament, employed in Christian dress, 
or architecture, which cannot be traced back to 
the serpent's coil ; and there is rarely a piece 
of monkish decorated writing in the world, that 
is not tainted with some ill-meant vileness of 
grotesque — nay, the very leaves of the twisted 
ivy-pattern of the fourteenth century can be 
followed back to wreaths for the foreheads of 
bacchanalian gods. And truly, it seems to me, 
as I gather in my mind the evidences of insane 
religion, degraded art, merciless war, sullen toil, 
detestable pleasure, and vain or vile hope, in 
which the nations of the world have lived since 
first they could bear record of themselves — it 
seems to me, I say, as if the race itself were 
still half-serpent, not extricated yet from its 
clay; a lacertine breed of bitterness — the glory 
of it emaciate with cruel hunger, and blotted 
with venomous stain : and the track of it, on 
the leaf a glittering slime, and in the sand a 
useless furrow. 

']2. There are no myths, therefore, by which 
the moral state and fineness of intelligence of dif- 
ferent races can be so deeply tried or measured, 



102 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

as by those of the serpent and the bird ; both 
of them having an especial relation to the kind 
of remorse for sin, or grief in fate, of which 
the national minds that spoke by them had 
been capable. The serpent and vulture are 
alike emblems of immortality and purification 
among races w^hich desired to be immortal and 
pure : and as they recognize their own misery, 
the serpent becomes to them the scourge of 
the Furies, and the vulture finds its eternal 
prey in their breast. The bird long contests, 
among the Egyptians, with the still received ser- 
pent, the symbol of power. But the Draconian 
image of evil is established in the serpent 
Apap ; while the bird's wings, with the globe, 
become part of a better symbol of deity, and 
the entire form of the vulture, as an emblem of 
purification, is associated with the earliest con- 
ception of Athena. In the type of the dove 
with the olive branch, the conception of the 
spirit of Athena in renewed life prevailing over 
ruin, is embodied for the whole of futurity ; 
while the Greeks, to whom, in a happier climate 
and higher life than that of Egypt, the vul- 
ture symbol of cleansing became unintelligible, 
took the eagle, instead, for their hieroglyph of 



11, ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 1 03 

supreme spiritual energy, and it thenceforward 
retains its hold on the human imagination, till 
it is established among Christian myths as the 
expression of the most exalted form of evange- 
listic teaching. The special relation of Athena 
to her favourite bird we will trace presently ; 
the peacock of Hera, and dove of Aphrodite, 
are comparatively unimportant myths : but the 
bird power is soon made entirely human by 
the Greeks in their flying angel of victory 
(partially human, with modified meaning of evil, 
in the Harpy and Siren) ; and thenceforward it 
associates itself with the Hebrew cherubim, 
and has had the most singular influence on the 
Christian religion by giving its wings to render 
the conception of angels mysterious and unten- 
able, and check rational endeavour to determine 
the nature of subordinate spiritual agency ; 
while yet it has given to that agency a vague 
poetical influence of the highest value in its 
own imaginative way. 

J"^. But with the early serpent-worship there 
was associated another — that of the groves — ■ 
of which you will also find the evidence ex- 
haustively collected in Mr. Fergusson's work. 
This tree-worship may have taken a dark form 



104 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

when associated with the Draconian one ; or 
opposed, as in Judea, to a purer faith ; but in 
itself, I beheve, it was always healthy, and 
though it retains little definite hieroglyphic 
power in subsequent religion, it becomes, in- 
stead of symbolic, real ; the flowers and trees 
are themselves beheld and beloved with a half- 
worshipping delight, which is always noble and 
healthful. 

And it is among the most notable indications 
of the volition of the animating power, that we 
find the ethical signs of good and evil set on 
,these also, as well as upon animals ; the venom 
of the serpent, and in some respects its image 
also, being associated even with the passionless 
growth of the leaf out of the ground ; while 
the distinctions of species seem appointed with 
more definite ethical address to the intelligence 
of man as their material products become more 
useful to him. 

74. I can easily show this, and, at the same 
time, make clear the relation to other plants of 
the flowers which especially belong to Athena, 
by examining the natural myths in the groups 
of the plants which would be used at any 
country dinner, over which Athena would, in 



II. ATHENA IN THE EARTH. IO5 

lier simplest household authority, cheerfully rule, 
here, in England. Suppose Horace's favourite 
dish of beans, with the bacon ; potatoes ; some 
savoury stuffing of onions and herbs with the 
meat ; celery, and a radish or two, with the 
cheese ; nuts and apples for dessert, and brown 
bread. 

75. The beans are, from earliest time, the 
most important and interesting of the seeds of 
the great tribe of plants from which came the 
Latin and French name for all kitchen vegeta- 
bles, — things that are gathered with the hand — 
podded seeds that cannot be reaped, or beaten, 
or shaken down, but must be gathered green. 
"Leguminous" plants, all of them having flowers 
like butterflies, seeds in (frequently pendent) 
pods, — " laetum siliqua quassante legumen " — 
smooth and tender leaves, divided into many 
minor ones, — strange adjuncts of tendril, for 
climbing (and sometimes of thorn) ; — exquisitely 
sweet, yet pure, scents of blossom, and almost 
always harmless, if not serviceable, seeds. It 
is, of all tribes of plants, the most definite ; its 
blossoms being entirely limited in their parts, 
and not passing into other forms. It is also 
the most usefully extended in range and scale ; 



I06 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

familiar in the height of the forest — acacia, la- 
burnum, Judas-tree ; famiHar in the sown field 
— bean and vetch and pea ; familiar in the pas- 
ture — in every form of clustered clover and 
sweet trefoil tracery ; the most entirely service- 
able and human of all orders of plants. 

']6. Next, in the potato, we have the scarcely 
innocent underground stem of one of a tribe set 
aside for evil ; * having the deadly nightshade 
for its queen, and including the henbane, the 
witch's mandrake, and the worst natural curse 
of modern civilization — tobacco. f And the 
strange thing about this tribe is, that though 
thus set aside for evil, they are not a group 
distinctly separate from those that are happier 
in function. There is nothing in other tribes 
of plants like the form of the bean blossom ; 
but there is another family with forms and 
structure closely connected with this venomous 
one. Examine the purple and yellow bloom of 
the common hedge nightshade ; you will find it 
constructed exactly like some of the forms of 

* Some two out of a hundred and fifty species of Solan um 
are useful to man. 

f It is not easy to estimate the demoralizing effect on the 
youth of Europe of the cigar, enabling them to pass tlicir 
time happily in idleness. 



II. ATHENA IN THE EARTH. lO/ 

the cyclamen ; and, getting this clue, you will 
find at last the whole poisonous and terrible 
group to be — sisters of the primulas ! 

The nightshades are, in fact, primroses with a 
curse upon them ; and a sign set in their petals, 
by which the deadly and condemned flowers 
may always be known from the innocent ones, 
— that the stamens of the nightshades are be- 
tween the lobes, and of the primulas, opposite 
the lobes, of the corolla. 

jy. Next, side by side, in the celery and 
radish, you have the two great groups of um- 
belled and cruciferous plants ; alike in condi- 
tions of rank among herbs : both flowering in 
clusters ; but the umbelled group, flat, the cru- 
cifers, in spires : — both of them mean and poor 
in the blossom, and losing what beauty they 
have by too close crowding : — both of them 
having the most curious influence on human 
character in the temperate zones of the earth, 
from the days of the parsley crown, and hem- 
lock drink, and mocked Euripidean chervil, 
until now : but chiefly among the northern 
nations, being especially plants that are of some 
humble beauty, and (the crucifers) of endless 
use, when they are chosen and cultivated ; but 



I08 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

that run to wild waste, and are the signs of neg- 
lected ground, in their rank or ragged leaves, 
and meagre stalks, and pursed or podded seed 
clusters. Capable, even under cultivation, of no 
perfect beauty, though reaching some subdued 
delightfulness in the lady's smock and the wall- 
flower ; for the most part, they have every floral 
quality meanly, and in vain, — they are white, 
without purity ; golden, without preciousness ; 
redundant, without richness ; divided, without 
fineness ; massive, without strength ; and slender, 
without grace. Yet think over that useful vul- 
garity of theirs ; and of the relations of German 
and English peasant character to its food of 
kraut and cabbage, (as of Arab character to its 
food of palm-fruit,) and you wull begin to feel, 
what purposes of the forming spirit are in 
these distinctions of species. 

y2>. Next we take the nuts and apples, — the 
nuts representing one of the groups of cat- 
kined trees, whose blossoms are only tufts and 
dust ; and the other, the rose tribe, in which 
fruit and flower alike have been the types, to 
the highest races of men, of all passionate temp- 
tation, or pure delight, from the coveting of 
Eve to the crowning of the Madonna, above the 



II. ATHENA IN THE EARTH. lOQ 

" Rosa sempiterna, 
Che si dilata, rigrada, e ridole 
Odor di lode al Sol." 

We have no time now for these, we must go 
on to the humblest group of all, yet the most 
wonderful, that of the grass, which has given 
us our bread ; and from that we will go back 
to the herbs. 

79. The vast family of plants which, under 
rain, make the earth green for man ; and, 
under sunshine, give him bread ; and, in their 
springing in the early year, mixed with their 
native flowers, have given us (far more than the 
new leaves of trees) the thought and word of 
" spring," divide themselves broadly into three 
great groups — the grasses, sedges, and rushes. 
The grasses are essentially a clothing for 
healthy and pure ground, watered by occasional 
rain, but in itself dry, and fit for all cultivated 
pasture and corn. They are distinctively plants 
with round and jointed stems, which have long 
green flexible leaves, and heads of seed, inde- 
pendently emerging from them. The sedges 
are es.sentially the clothing of waste and more 
or less poor or uncultivatable soils, coarse in 
their structure, frequently triangular in stem — 



no THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

hence called " acute " by Virgil —and with their 
heads of seed not extricated from their leaves. 
Now, in both the sedges and grasses, the 
blossom has a common structure, though unde- 
veloped in the sedges, but composed always of 
groups of double husks, which have mostly a 
spinous process in the centre, sometimes pro- 
jecting into a long awn or beard ; this central 
process being characteristic also of the ordinary 
leaves of mosses, as if a moss were a kind of 
ear of corn made permanently green on the 
ground, and with a new and distinct fructifica- 
tion. But the rushes differ wholly from the 
sedge and grass in their blossom structure. It 
is not a dual cluster, but a twice threefold one, 
so far separate from the grasses, and so closely 
connected with a higher order of plants, that I 
think you will find it convenient to group the 
rushes at once with that higher order, to which, 
if you will for the present let me give the 
general name of Drosidae, or dew-plants, it will 
enable me to say what I have to say of them 
much more shortly and clearly. 

80. These Drosidge, then, are plants delight- 
ing in interrupted moisture — moisture which 
comes either partially or at certain seasons — ■ 



II. ATHENA IN THE EARTH. I I I 

into dry ground. They are not water-plants ; 
but the signs of water resting among dry places. 
Many of the true water-plants have triple blos- 
soms, with a small triple calyx holding them ; 
in the Drosidae, the floral spirit passes into the 
calyx also, and the entire flower becomes a six- 
rayed star, bursting out of the stem laterally, 
as if it were the first of flowers, and had made 
its way to the light by force through the unwill- 
ing green. They are often required to retain 
moisture or nourishment for the future blossom 
through long times of drought ; and this they do 
in bulbs under ground, of which some become 
a rude and simple, but most wholesome food 
for man. 

8 1. So now, observe, you are to divide the 
whole family of the herbs of the field into three 
great groups — Drosidee, Carices,* Gramineae — 
dew-plants, sedges, and grasses. Then the 
Drosidae are divided into five great orders — - 
lilies, asphodels, amaryllids, irids, and rushes. 
No tribes of flowers have had so great, so 
varied, or so healthy an influence on man as 

* I think Carcx will be found ultimately better than 
Cj'perus for the generic name, being the Virgilian word, and 
representing a larger sub-species, 



112 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

this great group of Drosidae, depending not 
so much on the whiteness of some of their 
blossoms, or the radiance of others, as on the 
strength and deHcacy of the substance of their 
petals ; enabling them to take forms of faultless 
elastic curvature, either in cups, as the crocus 
or expanding bells, as the true lily, or heath- 
like bells, as the hyacinth, or bright and perfect 
stars, like the star of Bethlehem, or, when they 
are affected by the strange reflex of the ser- 
pent nature which forms the labiate group of 
all flowers, closing into forms of exquisitely 
fantastic symmetry in the gladiolus. Put by 
their side their Nereid sisters, the water-lilies, 
and you have in them the origin of the loveliest 
forms of ornamental design, and the most 
powerful floral myths yet recognized among 
human spirits, born by the streams of Ganges, 
Nile, Arno, and Avon. 

82. For consider a little what each of those 
five tribes* has been to the spirit of man. 

* Take this rough distinction of the four tribes : — Lilies, 
superior ovary, white seeds ; Asphodels, superior ovary, 
black seeds; Irids, inferior ovary, style (typically) rising 
into central crest ; Amaryllids, inferior ovary, stamens (typi- 
cally) joined in central cup. Then the rushes are a dark 
group, through which they stoop to the grasses. 



II. ATHENA IN THE EARTH, II3 

First, in their nobleness ; the LiHes gave the 
lily of the Annunciation ; the Asphodels, the 
flower of the Elysian fields; the Irids, the fleur- 
de-lys of chivalry ; and the Amaryllids, Christ's 
lily of the field : while the rush, trodden always 
under foot, became the emblem of humility. 
Then take each of the tribes, and consider the 
extent of their lower influence. Perdita's " The 
crown imperial, lilies of all kinds," are the first 
tribe ; which, giving the type of perfect purity 
in the Madonna's lily, have, by their lovely form, 
influenced the entire decorative design of Italian 
sacred art ; while ornament of war was con- 
tinually enriched by the curves of the triple 
petals of the Florentine "giglio," and French 
fleur-de-lys ; so that it is impossible to count 
their influence for good in the middle ages, 
partly as a symbol of womanly character, and 
partly of the utmost brightness and refinement 
of chivalry in the city which was the flower of 
cities. 

Afterwards, the group of the turban-lilies, or 
tulips, did some mischief, (their splendid stains 
having made them the favourite capi'ice of 
florists ;) but they may be pardoned all such 
guilt for the pleasure they have given in cottage 



114 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

gardens, and are yet to give, when lowly life 
may again be possible among us ; and the crim- 
son bars of the tulips in their trim beds, with 
their likeness in crimson bars of morning above 
them, and its dew glittering heavy, globed in 
their glossy cups, may be loved better than the 
gray nettles of the ash heap, under gray sky, 
unveined by vermilion or by gold. 

83. The next great group, of the Asphodels, 
divides itself also into two principal families ; 
one, in which the flowers are like stars, and 
clustered characteristically in balls, though open- 
ing sometimes into looser heads ; and the 
other, in which the flowers are in long bells, 
opening .suddenly at the lips, and clustered in 
spires on a long stem, or drooping from it, when 
bent by their weight. 

The star-group, of the squills, garlics, and 
onions, has always caused me great wonder. I 
cannot understand why its beauty, and service- 
ableness, should have been associated with the 
rank scent which has been really among the 
most powerful means of degrading peasant life, 
and separating it from that of the higher 
classes. 

The belled group, of the hyacinth and con- 



II. ATHENA IN THE EARTH. II 5 

vallaria, is as delicate as tlie other is coarse : 
the unspeakable azure light along the ground of 
the wood hyacinth in English spring ; the grape 
hyacinth, which is in south France, as if a cluster 
of grapes and a hive of honey had been distilled 
and compressed together into one small boss of 
celled and beaded blue; the lilies of the valley 
everywhere, in each sweet and wild recess of 
rocky land ; — count the influences of these on 
childish and innocent life ; then measure the 
mythic power of the hyacinth and asphodel 
as connected with Greek thoughts of immor- 
tality ; finally take their useful and nourishing 
power in ancient and modern peasant life, and 
it will be strange if you do not feel what fixed 
relation exists between the agency of the cre- 
ating spirit in these, and in us who live by 
them. 

84. It is impossible to bring into any tenable 
compass for our present purpose, even hints of 
the human influence of the two remaining orders 
of Amaryllids and Irids ; — only note this gener- 
ally, that while these in northern countries share 
with the Primulas the fields of spring, it seems 
that in Greece, the primulacese are not an ex- 
tended tribe, while the crocus, narcissus, and 



Il6 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR, 

Amaryllis lutea, the " lily of the field " (I sus- 
pect also that the flower whose name we trans- 
late " violet " was in truth an Iris) represented 
to the Greek the first coming of the breath of 
life on the renewed herbage ; and became in 
his thoughts the true embroidery of the saffron 
robe of Athena. Later in the year, the dianthus 
(which, though belonging to an entirely different 
race of plants, has yet a strange look of having 
been made out of the grasses by turning the 
sheath-membrane at the root of their leaves into 
a flower,) seems to scatter, in multitudinous 
families, its crimson stars far and wide. But 
the golden lily and crocus, together with the 
asphodel, retain always the old Greek's fondest 
thoughts — they are only " golden " flowers that 
are to burn on the trees, and float on the streams 
of paradise. 

85. I have but one tribe of plants more to 
note at our country feast — the savoury herbs ; 
but must go a little out of my way to come 
at them rightly. All flowers whose petals are 
fastened together, and most of those whose 
petals are loose, are best thought of first as 
a kind of cup or tube opening at the mouth. 
Sometimes the opening is gradual, as in the 



II. ATHENA IN THE EARTH. II 7 

convolvulus or campanula ; oftener there is a 
distinct change of direction between the tube 
and expanding lip, as in the primrose ; or even 
a contraction under the lip, making the tube 
into a narrow-necked phial or vase, as in the 
heaths, but the general idea of a tube ex- 
panding into a quatrefoil, cinquefoil, or sixfoil, 
will embrace most of the forms. 

86. Now it is easy to conceive that flowers 
of this kind, growing in close clusters, may, 
in process of time, have extended their outside 
petals rather than the interior ones (as the 
outer flowers of the clusters of many umbel- 
lifers actually do), and thus, elongated and 
variously distorted forms have established them- 
selves ; then if the stalk is attached to the side 
instead of the base of the tube, its base becomes 
a spur, and thus all the grotesque forms of the 
mints, violets, and larkspurs, gradually might 
be composed. But, however this may be, there 
is one great tribe of plants separate from 
the rest, and of which the influence seems 
shed upon the rest in different degrees : and 
these would give the impression, not so much 
of having been developed by change, as of 
being stamped with a character of their own, 



Il8 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

more or less serpentine or dragon-like. And 
I think you will find it convenient to call these 
generally, Draconidce ; disregarding their pre- 
sent ugly botanical name, which I do not care 
even to write once — you may take for their 
principal types the Foxglove, Snapdragon, and 
Calceolaria ; and you will find they all agree 
in a tendency to decorate themselves by spots, 
and with bosses or swollen places in their 
leaves, as if they had been touched by poison. 
The spot of the Foxglove is especially strange, 
because it draws the colour out of the tissue 
all round it, as if it had been stung, and as if 
the central colour was really an inflamed spot, 
with paleness round. Then also they carry to 
its extreme the decoration by bulging or pouting 
the petal ; — often beautifully used by other 
flowers in a minor degree, like the beating out 
of bosses in hollow silver, as in the kalmia, 
beating out apparently in each petal by the 
stamens instead of a hammer ; or the borage, 
pouting inwards ; but the snapdragons and 
calceolarias carry it to its extreme. 

87. Then the spirit of these Draconidse 
seems to pass more or less into other flowers, 
whose forms are properly pure vases ; but it 



II. ATHENA IN THE EARTH. II9 

affects some of them slightly, — others not at all. 
It never strongly affects the heaths ; never 
once the roses ; but it enters like an evil spirit 
into the buttercup, and turns it into a larkspur, 
with a black, spotted, grotesque centre, and 
a strange, broken blue, gorgeous and intense, 
3'et impure, glittering on the surface as if it 
were strewn with broken glass, and stained or 
darkening irregularly into red. And then at 
last the serpent charm changes the ranunculus 
into monkshood ; and makes it poisonous. It 
enters into the forget-me-not, and the star of 
heavenly turquoise is corrupted into the viper's 
bugloss, darkened with the same strange red as 
the larkspur, and fretted into a fringe of thorn ; 
it enters, together with a strange insect-spirit, 
into the asphodels, and (though with a greater 
interval between the groups,) they change into 
spotted orchideae : it touches the poppy, it 
becomes a fumaria ; the iris, and it pouts into 
a gladiolus ; the lily, and it chequers itself into 
a snake's-head, and secretes in the deep of its 
bell, drops, not of venom indeed, but honey- 
dew, as if it were a healing serpent. For there 
is an .^sculapian as well as an evil serpentry 
among the Draconidae, and the fairest of them, 



I20 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

the " erba della Madonna " of Venice, (Linaria 
Cymbalaria,) descends from the ruins it dehghts 
in to the herbage at their feet, and touches it ; 
and behold, instantly, a vast group of herbs for 
healing, — all draconid in form, — spotted, and 
crested, and from their lip-like corollas named 
"labiatae"; full of various balm, and warm 
strength for healing, yet all of them without 
splendid honour or perfect beauty, "ground 
ivies," richest when crushed under the foot ; 
the best sweetness and gentle brightness of 
the robes of the field, — thyme, and marjoram, 
and Euphrasy. 

88. And observe, again and again, with re- 
spect to all these divisions and powers of 
plants ; it does not matter in the least by what 
concurrences of circumstance or necessity they 
may gradually have been developed : the con- 
currence of circumstance is itself the supreme 
and inexplicable fact. We always come at last 
to a formative cause, which directs the circum- 
stance, and mode of meeting it. If you ask an 
ordinary botanist the reason of the form of a 
leaf, he will tell you it is a " developed tubercle," 
and that its ultimate form " is owing to the 
direction of its vascular threads." But what 



II. ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 121 

directs its vascular threads ? " They are seeking 
for something they want," he will probably 
answer. What made them want that ? What 
made them seek for it thus ? Seek for it, in 
five fibres or in three ? Seek for it, in serration, 
or in sweeping curves ? Seek for it, in servile 
tendrils, or impetuous spray ? Seek for it, in 
woollen wrinkles rough with stings, or in glossy 
surfaces, green with pure strength, and winter- 
less delight ? 

89. There is no answer. But the sum of all 
is, that over the entire surface of the earth and 
its waters, as influenced by the power of the 
air under solar light, there is developed a series 
of changing forms, in clouds, plants, and animals, 
all of which have reference in their action, or 
nature, to the human intelligence that perceives 
them ; and on which, in their aspects of horror 
and beauty, and their qualities of good and evil, 
there is engraved a series of myths, or words of 
the forming power, which, according to the true 
passion and energy of the human race, they 
have been enabled to read into religion. And 
this forming power has been by all nations 
partly confused with the breath or air through 
which it acts, and partly understood as a creative 



122 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

wisdom, proceeding from the Supreme Deity ; 
but entering into and inspiring all intelligences 
that work in harmony with Him. And what- 
ever intellectual results may be in modern days 
obtained by regarding this effluence only as a 
motion or vibration, every formative human art 
hitherto, and the best states of human happiness 
and order, have depended on the apprehension 
of its mystery (which is certam), and of its 
personality (which is probable). 

90. Of its influence on the formative arts, I 
have a few words to say separately : my present 
business is only to interpret, as we are now 
sufficiently enabled to do, the external symbols 
of the myth under which it was represented by 
the Greeks as a goddess of counsel, taken first 
into the breast of their Supreme Deity, then 
created out of his thoughts, and abiding closely 
beside him; always sharing and consummating 
his power. 

91. And in doing this we have first to note 
the meaning of the principal epithet applied to 
Athena, " Glaukopis," " with eyes full of light," 
the first syllable being connected, by its root, 
with words signifying sight, not with words 
signifying colour. As far as I can trace the 



II. ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 1 23 

colour perception of the Greeks, I find it all 
founded primarily on the degree of connection 
between colour and light ; the most important 
fact to them in the colour of red being its 
connection with fire and sunshine ; so that 
" purple " is, in its original sense, " fire-colour," 
and the scarlet, or orange, of dawn, more than 
any other, fire-colour. I was long puzzled by 
Homer's calling the sea purple ; and misled into 
thinking he meant the colour of cloud shadows 
on green sea ; whereas he really means the 
gleaming blaze of the waves under wide light, 
Aristotle's idea (partly true) is that light, sub- 
dued by blackness, becomes red ; and blackness 
heated or lighted, also becomes red. Thus, a 
colour may be called purple because it is light 
subdued (and so death is called " purple " or 
" shadowy " death) ; or else it may be called 
purple as being shade kindled with fire, and 
thus said of the lighted sea ; or even of the sun 
itself, when it is thought of as a red luminary 
opposed to the whiteness of the moon: "pur- 
pureos inter soles, et Candida lunae sidera ; " or 
of golden hair : " pro purpureo poenam solvens 
scelerata capillo ; " while both ideas are modified 
by the influence of an earlier form of the word, 



124 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

which has nothing to do with fire at all, but 
only with mixing or staining ; and then, to make 
the whole group of thoughts inextricably com- 
plex, yet rich and subtle in proportion to their 
intricacy, the various rose and crimson colours 
of the murex-dye, — the crimson and purple of 
the poppy, and fruit of the palm — and the 
association of all these with the hue of blood ; 
— partly direct, partly through a confusion 
between the word signifying "slaughter" and 
" palm-fruit colour," mingle themselves in, and 
renew the whole nature of the old word ; so 
that, in later literature, it means a different 
colour, or emotion of colour, in almost every 
place where it occurs : and casts around for 
ever the reflection of all that has been dipped 
in its dyes. 

92. So that the word is really a liquid prism, 
and stream of opal. And then, last of all, to 
keep the whole history of it in the fantastic 
course of a dream, warped here and there into 
wild grotesque, we moderns, who have preferred 
to rule over coal-mines instead of the sea (and 
so have turned the everlasting lamp of Athena 
into a Davy's safety-lamp in the hand of 
Britannia, and Athenian heavenly lightning into 



II. ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 125 

British subterranean " damp "), have actually 
got our purple out of coal instead of the sea ! 
And thus, grotesquely, we have had enforced on 
us the doubt that held the old word between 
blackness and fire, and have completed the 
shadow, and the fear of it, by giving it a name 
from battle, " Magenta." 

93. There is precisely a similar confusion be- 
tween light and colour in the word used for the 
blue of the eyes of Athena — a noble confusion, 
however, brought about by the intensity of the 
Greek sense that the heaven is light, more than 
that it is blue. I was not thinking of this when 
I wrote, in speaking of pictorial chiaroscuro, 
" The sky is not blue colour merely : it is blue 
fire, and cannot be painted" (Mod. P. iv. p. ^6); 
but it was this that the Greeks chiefly felt of it, 
and so "Glaukopis" chiefly means gray-eyed: 
gray standing for a pale or luminous blue ; but 
it only means " owl-eyed " in thought of the 
roundness and expansion, not from the colour ; 
this breadth and brightness being, again, in 
their moral sense, typical of the breadth, inten- 
sity, and singleness of the sight in prudence 
("if thine eye be single, thy whole body shall 
be full of light "). Then the actual power of 



126 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

the bird to see in twilight enters into the type, 
and perhaps its general fineness of sense. " Be- 
fore the human form was adopted, her (Athena's) 
proper symbol was the owl, a bird which seems 
to surpass all other creatures in acuteness of 
organic perception, its eye being calculated to 
observe objects which to all others are enveloped 
in darkness, its ear to hear sounds distinctly, 
and its nostrils to discriminate effluvia with such 
nicety that it has been deemed prophetic, from 
discovering the putridity of death even in the 
first stages of disease." * 

I cannot find anywhere an account of the 
first known occurrence of the type ; but, in the 
early ones on Attic coins, the wide round eyes 
are clearly the principal things to be made 
manifest. 

94, There is yet, however, another colour of 
great importance in the conception of Athena — 
the dark blue of her aegis. Just as the blue or 
gray of her eyes was conceived as more light 
than colour, so her aegis was dark blue, because 

* Payne Knight, in his " Inquiry into the Symbolical 
Language of Ancient Art," not trustworthy, being little more 
than a mass of conjectural memoranda, but the heap is 
suggestive, if well sifted. 



II, ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 12/ 

the Greeks thought of this tint more as shade 
than colour, and, while they used various ma- 
terials in ornamentation, lapis-lazuli, carbonate 
of copper, or perhaps, smalt, with real enjoy- 
ment of the blue tint, it was yet in their minds 
as distinctly representative of darkness as scarlet 
was of light, and, therefore, anything dark,* but 
especially the colour of heavy thundercloud, 
was described by the same term. The physical 
power of this darkness of the aegis, fringed with 

* In the breastplate and shield of Atrides the serpents 
and bosses are all of this dark colour, yet the serpents are 
said to be like rainbows ; but through all this splendour and 
opposition of hue, I feel distinctly that the literal " splen- 
dour," with its relative shade, are prevalent in the concep- 
tion ; and that there is always a tendency to look through 
the hue to its cause. And in this feeling about colour the 
Greeks are separated from the Eastern nations, and from the 
best designers of Christian times. I cannot find that they 
take pleasure in colour for its own sake; it may be in some- 
thing more than colour, or better ; but it is not in the hue 
itself When Homer describes cloud breaking from a moun- 
tain summit the crags became visible in light, not in colour; 
he feels only their flashing out in bright edges and trenchant 
shadows : above, the "infinite," "unspeakable" aether is torn 
open — but not the blue of it. He has scarcely any abstract 
pleasure in blue, or green, or gold ; but only in their shade 
or flame. 

I have yet to trace the causes of this (which will be a long 
task, belonging to art questions, not to mythological ones) ; 
but it is, I believe, much connected with the brooding of the 



128 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

lightning, is given quite simply when Jupiter 
himself uses it to overshadow Ida and the Plain 
of Troy, and withdraws it at the prayer of Ajax 
for light ; and again when he grants it to be worn 
for a time by Apollo, who is hidden by its cloud 
when he strikes down Patroclus : but its spiritual 
power is chiefly expressed by a word signify- 
ing deeper shadow ; — the gloom of Erebus, or 
of our evening, which, when spoken of the 

shadow of death over the Greeks, without any clear hope of 
immortaUty. The restriction of the colour on their vases to 
dim red (or yellow) with black and white, is greatly con- 
nected with their sepulchral use, and with all the melancholy 
of Greek tragic thought ; and in this gloom the failure of 
colour-perception is partly noble, partly base : noble, in its 
earnestness, which raises the design of Greek vases as far 
above the designing of mere colourist nations like the 
Chinese, as mens thoughts are above children's ; and yet it 
is partly base and earthly; and inherently defective in one 
human faculty: and I believe it was one cause of the perishing 
of their art so swiftly, for indeed there is no decline so 
sudden, or down to such utter loss and ludicrous depravity, 
as the fall of Greek design on its vases from the fifth to the 
third century, b.c. On the other hand, the pure colour-gift, 
when employed for pleasure only, degrades in another direc- 
tion ; so that among the Indians, Chinese, and Japanese, all 
intellectual progress in art has been for ages rendered im- 
possible by the prevalence of that faculty : and yet it is, as I 
have said again and again, the spiritual power of art ; and 
its true brightness is the essential characteristic of all healthy 
schools. 



II. ATHENA IN THE EARTH. I 29 

aegis, signifies not merely the indignation of 
Athena, but the entire hiding or withdrawal of 
her help, and beyond even this, her deadliest 
of all hostility,— the darkness by which she 
herself deceives and beguiles to final ruin those 
to whom she is wholly adverse ; this contra- 
diction of her own glory being the uttermost 
judgment upon human falsehood. Thus it is 
she who provokes Pandarus to the treachery 
which purposed to fulfil the rape of Helen by 
the murder of her husband in time of truce ; 
and tlien the Greek King, holding his wounded 
brother's hand, prophesies against Troy the 
darkness of the aegis which shall be over all, 
and for ever.* 

95. This, then, finally, was the perfect colour- 
conception of Athena ; — the flesh, snow-white, 
(the hands, feet, and face of marble, even when 
the statue was hewn roughly in wood) ; the eyes 
of keen pale blue, often in statues represented 
by jewels ; the long robe to the feet, crocus- 
coloured ; and the aegis thrown over it of thun- 
derous purple ; the helmet golden, (II. v. 144), 
and I suppose its crest also, as that of Achilles, 

If you think carefully of the meaning and 

* ipeixpTjv Alyioa Trdai. — II. iv. l66. 



130 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

character which is now enough illustrated for 
you in each of these colours ; and remember 
that the crocus-colour and the purple were both 
of them developments, in opposite directions, of 
the great central idea of fire-colour, or scarlet, 
you will see that this form of the creative spirit 
of the earth is conceived as robed in the blue, 
and purple, and scarlet, the white, and the 
gold, which have been recognized for the sacred 
chord of colours, from the day when the cloud 
descended on a Rock more mighty than Ida. 

96. I have spoken throughout, hitherto, of 
the conception of Athena, as it is traceable in 
the Greek mind ; not as it was rendered by 
Greek art. It is matter of extreme difficulty, 
requiring a sympathy at once affectionate and 
cautious, and a knowledge reaching the earliest 
springs of the religion of many lands, to dis- 
cern through the imperfection, and alas ! more 
dimly yet, through the triumphs, of formative 
art, what kind of thoughts they were that 
appointed for it the tasks of its childhood, and 
watched by the awakening of its strength. 

The religious passion is nearly always vivid- 
est when the art is weakest ; and the technical 
skill reaches its deliberate splendour only when 



II. ATHENA IN THE EARTH. I3I 

the ecstasy which gave it birth has passed 
away for ever. It is as vain an attempt to 
reason out the visionary power or guiding 
influence of Athena in the Greek heart, from 
anything we now read, or possess, of the work 
of Phidias, as it would be for the disciples of 
some new religion to infer the spirit of Christi- 
anity from Titian's "Assumption." The effec- 
tive vitality of the religious conception can be 
traced only through the efforts of trembling 
hands, and strange pleasures of untaught eyes ; 
and the beauty of the dream can no more be 
found in the first symbols by which it is ex- 
pressed, than a child's idea of fairyland can be 
gathered from its pencil scrawl, or a girl's love 
for her broken doll explained by the defaced 
features. On the other hand, the Athena of 
Phidias was, in very fact, not so much the deity, 
as the darling of the Athenian people. Her 
magnificence represented their pride and fond- 
ness, more than their piety ; and the great 
artist, in lavishing upon her dignities which 
might be ended abruptly by the pillage they 
provoked, resigned, apparently without regret, 
the awe of her ancient memory ; and, (with 
only the careless remonstrance of a workman 



132 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

too strong to be proud), even the perfectness 
of his own art. Rejoicing in the protection 
of their goddess, and in their own hour of 
glory, the people of Athena robed her, at their 
will, with the preciousness of ivory and gems ; 
forgot or denied the darkness of the breastplate 
of judgment, and vainly bade its unappeasable 
serpents relax their coils in gold. 

97. It will take me many a day yet — ^if days, 
many or few, be given me — to disentangle in 
anywise the proud and practised disguises of 
religious creeds from the instinctive arts which, 
grotesquely and indecorously, yet with sincerity, 
strove to embody them, or to relate. But I 
think the reader, by help even of the imperfect 
indications already given to him, will be able to 
follow, with a continually increasing security, 
the vestiges of the Myth of Athena ; and to re- 
animate its almost evanescent shade, by connect- 
ing it with the now recognized facts of existent 
nature, which it, more or less dimly, reflected 
and foretold. I gather these facts together in 
brief sum. 

98, The deep of air that surrounds the earth 
enters into union with the earth at its surface, 
and with its waters ; so as to be the apparent 



II. ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 1 33 

cause of their ascending into life. First, it 
warms them, and shades, at once, staying the 
heat of the sun's rays in its own body, but 
warding their force with its clouds. It warms 
and cools at once, with traffic of balm and frost; 
so that the white wreaths are withdrawn from 
the field of the Swiss peasant by the glow of 
Libyan rock. It gives its own strength to the 
sea ; forms and fills every cell of its foam ; 
sustains the precipices, and designs the valleys 
of its waves ; gives the gleam to their moving 
under the night, and the white fire to their 
plains under sunrise ; lifts their voices along 
the rocks, bears above them the spray of birds, 
pencils through them the dimpling of unfooted 
sands. It gathers out of them a portion in the 
hollow of its hand : dyes, with that, the hills 
into dark blue, and their glaciers with dying 
rose ; inlays with that, for sapphire, the dome 
in which it has to set the cloud ; shapes out of 
that the heavenly flocks : divides them, num- 
bers, cherishes, bears them on its bosom, calls 
them to their journeys, waits by their rest ; 
feeds from them the brooks that cease not, and 
strews with them the dews that cease. It spins 
and weaves their fleece into wild tapestry, 



134 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

rends it, and renews ; and flits and flames, and 
whispers, among the golden threads, thrilling 
them with a plectrum of strange fire that tra- 
verses them to and fro, and is enclosed in 
them like life. 

It enters into the surface of the earth, sub- 
dues it, and falls together with it into fruitful 
dust, from which can be moulded flesh ; it joins 
itself, in dew, to the substance of adamant ; and 
becomes the green leaf out of the dry ground ; 
it enters into the separated shapes of the earth 
it has tempered, commands the ebb and flow of 
the current of their life, fills their limbs with 
its own lightness, measures their existence by 
its indwelling pulse, moulds upon their lips 
the words by which one soul can be known to 
another ; is to them the hearing of the ear, and 
the beating of the heart ; and, passing away, 
leaves them to the peace that hears and moves 
no more. 

99. This was the Athena of the greatest 
people of the days of old. And opposite to 
the temple of this Spirit of the breath, and 
life-blood, of man and of beast, stood, on the 
Mount of Justice, and near the chasm which was 
haunted by the goddess- Avengers, an altar to 



II, ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 1 35 

a God unknown ; — proclaimed at last to them, 
as one who, indeed, gave to all men, life, and 
breath, and all things ; and rain from heaven, 
filling their hearts with food and gladness ; — a 
God who had made of one blood all nations of 
men who dwell on the face of all the earth, and 
had determined the times of their fate, and the 
bounds of their habitation. 

100. We ourselves, fretted here in our nar- 
row days, know less, perhaps, in very deed, 
than they, what manner of spirit we are of, or 
what manner of spirit we ignorantly worship. 
Have we, indeed, desired the Desire of all na- 
tions? and will the Master whom we meant to 
seek, and the Messenger in whom we thought 
we delighted, confirm, when He comes to His 
temple, — or not find in its midst, — the tables 
heavy with gold for bread, and the seats that 
are bought with the price of the dove ? Or 
is our own land also to be left by its angered 
Spirit ; — left among those, where sunshine 
vainly sweet, and passionate folly of storm, 
waste themselves in the silent places of know- 
ledge that has passed away, and of tongues 
that have ceased ? 

This only we may discern assuredly : this, 



136 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

every true light of science, every mercifully- 
granted power, every wisely-restricted thought, 
teach us more clearly day by day, that in the 
heavens above, and the earth beneath, there is 
one continual and omnipotent presence of help, 
and of peace, for all men who know that they 
Live, and remember that they Die. 



III. 

ATHENA ERGANE.* 

[Athena in the Heart.) 

Various Notes relating to the Conception of Athena as the 
Dinctrcss of the Imagination and Will. 

1 01. I HAVE now only a few words to say, 
bearing on what seems to me present need, re- 
specting the third function of Athena, conceived 
as the directress of human passion, resohition, 
and labour. 

Few words, for I am not yet prepared to 
give accurate distinction between the intellec- 
tual rule of Athena and that of the Muses : 
but, broadly, the Muses, with their king, preside 
over meditative, historical, and poetic arts, 
whose end is the discovery of light or truth, 
and the creation of beauty : but Athena rules 
over moral passion, and practically useful art. 

* "Athena the worker, or having rule over work."' The 
name was first given to her by the Athenians. 



138 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

She does not make men learned, but prudent 
and subtle : she does not teach them to make 
their work beautiful, but to make it right. 

In different places of my writings, and 
through many years of endeavour to define the 
laws of art, I have insisted on this rightness in 
work, and on its connection with virtue of cha- 
racter, in so many partial ways, that the impres- 
sion left on the reader's mind — if, indeed, it was 
ever impressed at all — has been confused and 
uncertain. In beginning the series of my cor- 
rected works, I wish this principle (in my own 
mind the foundation of every other) to be made 
plain, if nothing else is : and will try, therefore, 
to make it so, as far as, by any effort, I can put 
it into unmistakable words. And, first, here is 
a very simple statement of it, given lately in 
a lecture on the Architecture of the Valley of 
the Somme, which will be better read in this 
place than in its incidental connection with 
my account of the porches of Abbeville. 

102. I had used, in a preceding part of the 
lecture, the expression, " by what faults " this 
Gothic architecture fell. We continually speak 
thus of works of art. We talk of their faults 
and merits, as of virtues and vices. What do 



in. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 1 39 

we mean by talking of the faults of a picture, 
or the merits of a piece of stone ? 

The faults of a work of art are the faults of 
its workman, and its virtues his virtues. 

Great art is the expression of the mind of a 
great man, and mean art, that of the want of 
mind of a weak man. A foolish person builds 
foolishly, and a wise one, sensibly ; a virtuous 
one, beautifully; and a vicious one, basely. If 
stone work is well put together, it means that 
a thoughtful man planned it, and a careful man 
cut it, and an honest man cemented it. If it 
has too much ornament, it means that its carver 
was too greedy of pleasure ; if too little, that 
he was rude, or insensitive, or stupid, and the 
like. So that when once you have learned 
how to spell these most precious of all legends, 
— pictures and buildings, — you may read the 
characters of men, and of nations, in their 
art, as in a mirror ; — nay, as in a microscope, 
and magnified a hundredfold ; for the character 
becomes passionate in the art, and intensifies 
itself in all its noblest or meanest delights. 
Nay, not only as in a microscope, but as under 
a scalpel, and in dissection ; for a man may 
hide himself from you, or misrepresent himself 



140 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

to you, every other way ; but he cannot in his 
work : there, be sure, you have him to the 
inmost. Al! that he likes, all that he sees, — 
all that he can do, — his imagination, his affec- 
tions, his perseverance, his impatience, his 
clumsiness, cleverness, everything is there. If 
the work is a cobweb, you know it was made 
by a spider ; if a honeycomb, by a bee ; a 
worm-cast is thrown up by a worm, and a nest 
wreathed by a bird ; and a house built by a 
man, worthily, if he is worthy, and ignobly, if 
he is ignoble. 

And always, from the least to the greatest, 
as the made thing is good or bad, so is the 
maker of it. 

103. You all use this faculty of judgment 
more or less, whether you theoretically admit 
the principle or not. Take that floral gable ; * 
you don't suppose the man who built Stone- 
henge could have built that, or that the man 
who built that, would have built Stonehenge ? 
Do you think an old Roman would have liked 
such a piece of filigree work ? or that Michael 

* The elaborate pediment above the central porch at the 
west end of Rouen Cathedral, pierced into a transparent web 
of tracery, and enriched with a border of " twisted eglantine.'' 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. I4I 

Angelo would have spent his time in twist- 
ing these stems of roses in and out ? Or, of 
modern handicraftsmen, do you think a burglar, 
or a brute, or a pickpocket could have carv^ed 
it ? Could Bill Sykes have done it ? or the 
Dodger, dexterous with finger and tool ? You 
will find in the end, that no man could have 
done it but exactly the man who did it; and by 
looking close at it, you may, if you know your 
letters, read precisely the manner of man he 
was. 

104. Now I must insist on this matter, for a 
grave reason. Of all facts concerning art, this 
is the one most necessary to be known, that, 
while manufacture is the work of hands only, 
art is the work of the whole spirit of man ; and 
as that spirit is, so is the deed of it : and by 
whatever power of vice or virtue any art is pro- 
duced, the same vice or virtue it reproduces and 
teaches. That which is born of evil begets evil ; 
and that which is born of valour and honour, 
teaches valour and honour. All art is either 
infection or education. It nmst be one or other 
of these. 

105. This, I repeat, of all truths respecting art, 
is the one of which understanding is the most 



142 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

precious, and denial the most deadly. And I 
assert it the more, because it has of late been re- 
peatedly, expressly, and with contumely denied ; 
and that by high authority : and I hold it one of 
the most sorrowful facts connected with the de- 
cline of the arts among us, that English gentle- 
men, of high standing as scholars and artists, 
should have been blinded into the acceptance, 
and betrayed into the assertion of a fallacy which 
only authority such as theirs could have rendered 
for an instant credible. For the contrary of it 
is written in the history of all great nations ; it 
is the one sentence always inscribed on the 
steps of their thrones ; the one concordant voice 
in which they speak to us out of their dust. 
All such nations first manifest themselves as 
a pure and beautiful animal race, with intense 
energy and imagination. They live lives of hard- 
ship by choice, and by grand instinct of manly 
discipline : they become fierce and irresistible 
soldiers ; the nation is always its own army, 
and their king, or chief head of government, is 
always their first soldier. Pharaoh, or David, 
or Leonidas, or Valerius, or Barbarossa, or Coeur 
de Lion, or St. Louis, or Dandolo, or Frederick 
the Great : — Egyptian, Jew, Greek, Roman, 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. I43 

German, English, French, Venetian, — that is 
inviolable law for them all ; their king must be 
their first soldier, or they cannot be in progres- 
sive power. Then, after their great military 
period, comes the domestic period ; in which, 
without betraying the discipline of war, they 
add to their great soldiership the delights and 
possessions of a delicate and tender home-life : 
and then, for all nations, is the time of their 
perfect art, which is the fruit, the evidence, the 
reward of their national ideal of character, deve- 
loped by the finished care of the occupations of 
peace. That is the history of all true art that 
ever was, or can be : palpably the history of 
it, — unmistakably, — written on the forehead of 
it in letters of light, — in tongues of fire, by 
which the seal of virtue is branded as deep as 
ever iron burnt into a convict's flesh the seal 
of crime. But always, hitherto, after the great 
period, has followed the day of luxury, and 
pursuit of the arts for pleasure only. And all 
has so ended. 

106. Thus far of Abbeville building. Now 
I have here asserted two things, — first, the 
foundation ot art in moral character ; next, the 
foundation of moral character in war. I must 



144 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

make both these assertions clearer, and prove 
them. 

First, of the foundation of art in moral cha- 
racter. Of course art-gift and amiability of dis- 
position are two different things ; a good man 
is not necessarily a painter, nor does an eye for 
colour necessarily imply an honest mind. But 
great art implies the union of both powers : it 
is the expression, by an art-gift, of a pure 
soul. If the gift is not there, we can have 
no art at all ; and if the soul — and a right 
soul too — is not there, the art is bad, however 
dexterous. 

107. But also, remember, that the art-gift it- 
self is only the result of the moral character of 
generations. A bad woman may have a sweet 
voice ; but that sweetness of voice comes of the 
past morality of her race. That she can sing 
with it at all, she owes to the determination 
of laws of music by the morality of the past. 
Ever}"- act, every impulse, of virtue and vice, 
affects in any creature, face, voice, nervous 
power, and vigour and harmony of invention, 
at once. Perseverance in Tightness of human 
conduct, renders, after a certain number of gene- 
rations, human art possible ; every sin clouds 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. I45 

it, be it ever so little a one ; and persistent 
vicious living and following of pleasure rendei", 
after a certain number of generations, all art 
impossible. Men are deceived by the long- 
suffering of the laws of nature ; and mistake, in 
a nation, the reward of the virtue of its sires for 
the issue of its own sins. The time of their 
visitation will come, and that inevitably ; for, it 
is always true, that if the fathers have eaten 
sour grapes, the children's teeth are set on edge. 
And for the individual, as soon as you have 
learned to read, you may, as I have said, know 
him to the heart's core, through his art. Let 
his art-gift be never so great, and cultivated to 
the height by the schools of a great race of 
men ; and it is still but a tapestry thrown over 
his own being and inner soul ; and the bearing 
of it will show, infallibly, whether it hangs on 
a man, or on a skeleton. If you are dim-eyed, 
you may not see the difference in the fall of the 
folds at first, but learn how to look, and the 
folds themselves will become transparent, and 
you shall see through them the death's shape, 
or the divine one, making the tissue above it 
as a cloud of light, or as a winding-sheet. 
108. Then farther, observe, I have said (and 

10 



146 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

you will find it true, and that to the uttermost) 
that, as all lovely art is rooted in virtue, so it 
bears fruit of virtue, and is didactic in its own 
nature. It is often didactic also in actually ex- 
pressed thought, as Giotto's, Michael Angelo's, 
Diirer's, and hundreds more ; but that is not 
its special function, — it is didactic chiefly by 
being beautiful ; but beautiful with haunting 
thought, no less than with form, and full of 
myths that can be read only with the heart. 
For instance, at this moment there is open 
beside me as I write, a page of Persian manu- 
script, wrought with wreathed azure and gold, 
and soft green, and violet, and ruby and scarlet, 
into one field of pure resplendence. It is 
wrought to delight the eyes only ; and it does 
delight them ; and the man who did it assuredly 
had eyes in his head ; but not much more. It 
is not didactic art, but its author was happy : 
and it will do the good, and the harm, that 
mere pleasure can do. But, opposite me, is an 
early Turner drawing of the lake of Geneva, 
taken about two miles from Geneva, on the 
Lausanne road, with Mont Blanc in the dis- 
tance. The old city is seen lying beyond the 
waveless waters, veiled with a sweet misty veil 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 1 47 

of Athena's weaving : a faint light of morning, 
peaceful exceedingly, and almost colourless, 
shed from behind the Voirons, increases into 
soft amber along the slope of the Saleve, and 
is just seen, and no more, on the fair warm 
fields of its summit, between the folds of a white 
cloud that rests upon the grass, but rises, high 
and towerlike, into the zenith of dawn above. 

109. There is not as much colour in that 
low amber light upon the hill-side as there is 
in the palest dead leaf The lake is not blue, 
but grey in mist, passing into deep shadow be- 
neath the Voirons' pines ; a few dark clusters 
of leaves, a single white flower — scarcely seen 
— are all the gladness given to the rocks of the 
shore. One of the ruby spots of the eastern 
manuscript would give colour enough for all 
the red that is in Turner's entire drawing. 
For the mere pleasure of the eye, there is not 
so much in all those lines ol his, throughout 
the entire landscape, as in half an inch square 
of the Persian's page. What made him take 
pleasure in the low colour that is only like the 
brown of a dead leaf? in the cold grey of dawn 
—in the one white flower among the rocks — in 
these — and no more than these ? 



148 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

no. He took pleasure in them because he 
had been bred among English fields and hills ; 
because the gentleness of a great race was in 
his heart, and its power of thought in his brain ; 
because he knew the stories of the Alps, and 
of the cities at their feet ; because he had read 
the Homeric legends of the clouds, and beheld 
the gods of dawn, and the givers of dew to the 
fields ; because he knew the faces of the crags, 
and the imagery of the passionate mountains, 
as a man knows the face of his friend ; because 
he had in him the wonder and sorrow concern- 
ing life and death, which are the inheritance of 
the Gothic soul from the days of its first sea 
kings ; and also the compassion and the joy that 
are woven into the innermost fabric of every 
great imaginative spirit, born now in countries 
that have lived by the Christian faith with any 
courage or truth. And the picture contains also, 
for us, just this which its maker had in him to 
give ; and can convey it to us, just so far as we 
are of the temper in which it must be received. 
It is didactic, if we are worthy to be taught, no 
otherwise. The pure heart, it will make more 
pure ; the thoughtful, more thoughtful. It has 
in it no words for the reckless or the base. 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART I49 

III. As I myself look at it, there is no fault 
nor folly of my life, — and both have been many 
and great, — that does not rise up against me, 
and take away my joy, and shorten my power 
of possession, of sight, of understanding. And 
every past effort of my life, every gleam of 
rightness or good in it, is with me now, to help 
me in my grasp of this heart, and its vision. 
So far as I can rejoice in, or interpret either, 
my power is owing to what of right there is in 
me. I dare to say it, that, because through all 
my life I have desired good, and not evil ; be- 
cause I have been kind to many ; have wished 
to be kind to all ; have wilfully injured none ; 
and because I have loved much, and not 
selfishly ; — therefore, the morning light is yet 
visible to me on those hills, and you, who read, 
may trust my thought and word in such work 
as I have to do for you ; and you will be glad 
afterwards that you have trusted them. 

112. Yet remember, — I repeat it again and 
yet again, — that I may for once, it possible, 
make this thing assuredly clear : — the inherited 
art-gift must be there, as well as the life in 
some poor measure, or rescued fragment, right. 
This art-gift of mine could not have been won 



150 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

by any work, or by any conduct ; it belongs to 
me by birthright, and came by Athena's will, 
from the air of English country villages, and 
Scottish hills. I will risk whatever charge of 
folly may come on me, for printing one of my 
many childish rhymes, written on a frosty day 
in Glen Farg, just north of Loch Leven. I 
bears date 1st January, 1828. I was born on 
the 8th of February, 1819 ; and all that I ever 
could be, and all that I cannot be, the weak 
little rhyme already shows. 

" Papa, how pretty those icicles are, 
That are seen so near,— that are seen so far ; 
— Those dropping waters that come from the rocks 
And many a hole, like the haunt of a fox. 
That silvery stream that runs babbling along, 
Making a murmuring, dancing song. 
Those trees that stand waving upon the rock's side. 
And men, that, like spectres, among them glide. 
And waterfalls that are heard from far. 
And come in sight when very near. 
And the water-wheel that turns slowly round, 
Grinding the corn that — requires to be ground, — 

(Political Economy of the future !) 

■ And mountains at a distance seen. 

And rivers winding through the plain. 
And quarries with their craggy stones. 
And the wind among them moans. " 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. I5I 

So foretelling Stones of Venice, and this essay 
on Athena. 

Enough now concerning myself. 

113. Of Turner's life, and of its good and 
evil, both great, but the good immeasurably 
the greater, his work is in all things a perfect 
and transparent evidence. His biography is 
simply, — " He did this, nor will ever another 
do its like again." Yet read what I have said 
of him, as compared with the great Italians, in 
the passages taken from the " Cestus of Aglaia," 
farther on, § 158, 

114. This, then, is the nature of the con- 
nection of morals with art. Now, secondly, 
I have asserted the foundation of both these, 
at least, hitherto, in war. The reason of this 
too manifest fact is, that, until now, it has been 
impossible for any nation, except a warrior 
one, to fix its mind wholly on its men, instead 
of on their possessions. Every great soldi-er 
nation thinks, necessarily, first of multiplying 
its bodies and souls of men, in good temper 
and strict discipline. As long as this is its 
political aim, it does not matter what it tem- 
porarily suffers, or loses, either in numbers or 
in wealth ; its morality and its arts, (if it have 



152 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

national art-gift,) advance together ; but so 
soon as it ceases to be a warrior nation, it 
thinks of its possessions instead of its men ; 
and then the moral and poetic powers vanish 
together. 

115- It is thus, however, absolutely necessary 
to the virtue of war that it should be waged by 
personal strength, not by money or machinery. 
A nation that fights with a mercenary force, 
or with torpedoes instead of its own arms, is 
dying. Not but that there is more true courage 
in modern than even in ancient war ; but this is, 
first, because all the remaining life of European 
nations is with a morbid intensity thrown nito 
their soldiers ; and, secondly, because their pre- 
sent heroism is the culmination of centuries 
of inbred and traditional valour, which Athena 
taught them by forcing them to govern the 
foan\ of the sea-wave and of the horse, — not 
the steam of kettles. 

116. And farther, note this, which is vital to 
us in the present crisis : If war is to be made by 
money and machinery, the nation which is the 
largest and most covetous multitude will win. 
You may be as scientific as you choose ; the 
mob that can pay more for sulphuric acid and 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 1 53 

gunpowder will at last poison its bullets, throw 
acid in your faces, and make an end of you ; — of 
itself, also, in good time, but of you first. And 
to the English people the choice of its fate is 
very near now. It may spasmodically defend 
its property with iron walls a fathom thick, a 
few years longer — a very few. No walls will 
defend either it, or its havings, against the mul- 
titude that is breeding and spreading, faster 
than the clouds, over the habitable earth. We 
shall be allowed to live by small pedlar's busi- 
ness, and ironmongery — since we have chosen 
those for our line of life — as long as we are 
found useful black servants to the Americans ; 
and are content to dig coals and sit in the 
cinders ; and have still coals to dig, — they once 
exhausted, or got cheaper elsewhere, we shall 
be abolished. But if we think more wisel}', 
while there is yet time, and set our minds again 
on multiplying Englishmen, and not on cheap- 
ening English wares ; if we resolve to submit 
to wholesome laws of labour and econoni}', and, 
setting our political squabbles aside, try how 
many strong creatures, friendly and faithful to 
each other, we can crowd into every spot of 
English dominion, neither poison nor iron will 



154 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

prevail against us; nor traffic — nor hatred: the 
noble nation will yet, by the grace of Heaven, 
rule over the ignobte, and force of heart hold 
its own against fire-balls. 

IT/. But there is yet a farther reason for the 
dependence of the arts on war. The vice and 
injustice of the world are constantly springing 
anew, and are only to be subdued by battle ; 
the keepers of order and law must always be 
soldiers. And now, going back to the myth 
of Athena, we see that though she is first a 
warrior maid, she detests war for its own sake ; 
she arms Achilles and Ulysses in just quarrels, 
but she r//sarms Ares. She contends, herself, 
continually against disorder and convulsion in 
the Earth giants ; she stands by Hercules' side 
in victory over all monstrous evil : in justice 
only she judges and makes war. But in this 
war of hers she is wholly implacable. She has 
little notion of converting criminals. There is 
no faculty of mercy in her when she has been 
resisted. Her word is only, " I will mock when 
your fear cometh." Note the words that follow : 
" when your fear cometh as desolation, and your 
destruction as a whirlwind ; " for her wrath is 
of irresistible tempest : once roused, it is blind 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 1 55 

and deaf, — rabies — madness of anger — dark- 
ness of the Dies Irse. 

And that is, indeed, the sorrowfullest fact 
we have to know about our own several h'ves. 
Wisdom never forgives. Whatever resistance 
we have offered to her law, she avenges for 
ever ;— the lost hour can never be redeemed, and 
the accomplished wrong never atoned for. The 
best that can be done afterwards, but for that, 
had been better ; — the falsest of all the cries of 
peace, where there is no peace, is that of the 
pardon of sin, as the mob expect it. Wisdom 
can " put away " sin, but she cannot pardon it ; 
and she is apt, in her haste, to put away the 
sinner as well, when the black aegis is on her 
breast. 

1 18. And this is also a fact we have to know 
about our national life, that it is ended as soon 
as it has lost the power of noble Anger. When 
it paints over, and apologizes for its pitiful 
criminalities; and endures its false weights, and 
its adulterated food ; — dares not decide prac- 
tically between good and evil, and can neither 
honour the one, nor smite the other, but sneers 
at the good, as if it were hidden evil, and consoles 
the evil with pious sympathy, and conserves 



156 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

it in the sugar of its leaden heart, — the end is 
come. 

1 19. The first sign, then, of Athena's presence 
with any people, is that they become warriors, 
and that the chief thought of every man of 
them is to stand rightly in his rank, and not fail 
from his brother's side in battle. Wealth, and 
pleasure, and even love, are all, under Athena's 
orders, sacrificed to this duty of standing fast 
in the rank of war. 

But farther : Athena presided over industry, 
as well as battle ; typically, over women's in- 
dustry ; that brings comfort with pleasantness. 
Her word to us all is : — " Be well exercised, 
and rightly clothed. Clothed, and in your right 
minds ; not insane and in rags, nor in soiled fine 
clothes clutched from each other's shoulders. 
Fight and weave. Then I myself will answer 
for the course of the lance, and the colours of 
the loom." 

And now I will ask the reader to look with 
some care through these following passages 
respecting modern multitudes and their occu- 
pations, written long ago, but left in fragmen- 
tary form, in which they must now stay, and 
be of what use they can. 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. I 5/ 

120. It is not political economy to put a 
number of strong men down on an acre of 
ground, with no lodging, and nothing to eat. 
Nor is it political economy to build a city on 
good ground, and fill it with store of corn and 
treasure, and put a score of lepers to live in it. 
Political economy creates together the means 
of life, and the living persons who are to use 
them ; and of both, the best and the most that 
it can, but imperatively the best, not the most. 
A few good and healthy men, rather than a 
multitude of diseased rogues ; and a little real 
milk and wine rather than much chalk and 
petroleum ; but the gist of the whole business 
is, that the men, and their property, must both 
be produced together — not one to the loss of 
the other. Property must not be created in 
lands desolate by exile of their people,— nor 
multiplied and depraved humanity, in lands 
barren of bread. 

121. Nevertheless, though the men and their 
possessions are to be increased at the sam.e 
time, the first object of thought is always to 
be the multiplication of a worthy people. The 
strength of the nation is in its multitude, not 
in its territory ; but only in its sound multitude. 



158 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

It is one thing, both in a man and a nation, 
to gain flesh, and another to be swollen with 
putrid humours. Not that multitude ever ought 
to be inconsistent with virtue. Two men should 
be wiser than one, and two thousand than two ; 
nor do I know another so gross fallacy in the 
records of human stupidity as that excuse for 
neglect of crime by greatness of cities. As if 
the first purpose of congregation were not to 
devise laws and repress crimes ! as if bees and 
wasps could live honestly in flocks, — men, only 
in separate dens ! — as if it were easy to help 
one another on the opposite sides of a mountain, 
and impossible on the opposite sides of a street ! 
But when the men are true and good, and stand 
shoulder to shoulder, the strength of any nation 
is in its quantity of life, not in its land nor 
gold. The more good men a state has, in pro- 
portion to its territory, the stronger the state. 
And as it has been the madness of economists 
to seek for gold instead of life, so it has been 
the madness of kings to seek for land instead 
of life. They want the town on the other side 
of the river, and seek it at the spear point : it 
never enters their stupid heads that to double 
the honest souls in the town on this side of 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 1 59 

the river, would make them stronger kings ; 
and that this doubhng might be done by the 
ploughshare instead of the spear, and through 
happiness instead of misery. 

Therefore, in brief, this is the object of all true 
policy and true economy: "utmost multitude 
of good men on every given space of ground " 
— imperatively always, good, sound, honest men, 
not a mob of white-faced thieves. So that, on 
the one hand, all aristocracy is wrong which is 
inconsistent with numbers ; and, on the other, 
all numbers are wrong which are inconsistent 
with breeding. 

122. Then, touching -the accumulation of 
wealth for the maintenance of such men, ob- 
serve, that you must never use the terms 
"money" and "wealth" as synonymous. 
Wealth consists of the good, and therefore 
useful, things in the possession of the nation : 
money is only the written or coined sign of the 
relative quantities of wealth in each person's 
possession. All money is a divisible title-deed, 
of immense importance as an expression of 
right to property ; but absolutely valueless, 
as property itself. Thus, supposing a nation 
isolated from all others, the money in its 



l60 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

possession is, at its maximum value, worth all 
the property of the nation, and no more, because 
no more can be got lor it. And the money 
of all nations is worth, at its maximum, the 
property of all nations, and no more, for no 
more can be got for it. Thus, every article 
of property produced increases, by its value, 
the value of all the money in the world, and 
every article of property destroyed diminishes 
the value of all the money in the world. If 
ten men are cast away on a rock, with a thou- 
sand pounds in their pockets, and there is on 
the rock neither food nor shelter, their money 
is worth simply nothing ; for nothing is to be 
had for it : if they build ten huts, and recover a 
cask of biscuit from the wreck, then their thou- 
sand pounds, at its maximum value, is worth ten 
huts and a cask of biscuit. If they make their 
thousand pounds into two thousand by writing 
new notes, their two thousand pounds are still 
only worth ten huts and a cask of biscuit. And 
the law of relative value is the same for all the 
world, and all the people in it, and all their 
property, as for ten men on a rock. Therefore, 
money is truly and finally lost in the degree in 
which its value is taken from it, (ceasing in 



in. ATHENA IN THE HEART. l6l 

that degree to be money at all) ; and it is truly 
gained in the degree in which value is added 
to it. Thus, suppose the money coined by the 
nation to be a fixed sum, divided very minutely, 
(say into francs and cents), and neither to be 
added to, nor diminished. Then every grain 
of food and inch of lodging added to its pos- 
sessions makes every cent in its pockets worth 
proportionally more, and every grain of food 
it consumes, and inch of roof it allows to fall 
to ruin, makes every cent in its pockets worth 
less ; and this with mathematical precision. 
The immediate value of the money at parti- 
cular times and places depends, indeed, on the 
humours of the possessors of property ; but the 
nation is in the one case gradually getting 
richer ; and will feel the pressure of poverty 
steadily everywhere relaxing, whatever the 
humours of individuals may be ; and, in the 
other case, is gradually growing poorer, and 
the pressure of its poverty will every day tell 
more and more, in ways that it cannot explain, 
but will most bitterly feel. 

123. The actual quantity of money which it 
coins, in relation to its real property, is there- 
fore only of consequence for convenience of 

I I 



1 62 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

exchange ; but the proportion in which this 
quantity of money is divided among individuals 
expresses their various rights to greater or less 
proportions of the national property, and must 
not, therefore, be tampered with. The Govern- 
ment may at any time, with perfect justice, 
double its issue of coinage, if it gives every 
man who had ten pounds in his pocket, another 
ten pounds, and every man who had ten pence, 
another ten pence ; for it thus does not make 
any of them richer ; it merely divides their 
counters for them into twice the number. But 
if it gives the newly-issued coins to other 
people, or keeps them itself, it simply robs the 
former holders to precisely that extent. This 
most important function of money, as a title- 
deed, on the non-violation of which all na- 
tional soundness of commerce and peace of life 
depend, has been never rightly distinguished by 
economists from the quite unimportant func- 
tion of money as a means of exchange. You 
can exchange goods, — at some inconvenience 
indeed, but still you can contrive to do it, — 
without money at all ; but you cannot maintain 
your claim to the savings of your past life 
without a document declaring the amount of 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 1 63 

them, which the nation and its Government 
will respect. 

124. And as economists have lost sight of 
this great function of money in relation to in- 
dividual rights, so they have equally lost sight 
of its function as a representative of good 
things. That, for every good thing produced, 
so much money is put into everybody's pocket 
— is the one simple and primal truth for the 
public to know, and for economists to teach. 
How many of them have taught it ? Some 
have ; but only incidentally ; and others will 
say it is a truism. If it be, do the public know 
it ? Does your ordinary English householder 
know that every costly dinner he gives has de- 
stroyed as much money as it is worth ? Does 
every well-educated girl — do even the wcmen 
in high political position — know that every 
fine dress they wear themselves, or cause to be 
worn, destroys precisely so much of the national 
money as the labour and material of it are 
worth ? If this be a truism, it is one that 
needs proclaiming somewhat louder. 

125. That, then, is the relation of money and 
goods. So much goods, so much money ; so 
little goods, so little money. But, as there is 



164 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

this true relation between money and " goods," 
or good things, so there is a false relation 
between money and " bads," or bad things. 
Many bad things will fetch a price in exchange ; 
but they do not increase the wealth of the 
country. Good wine is wealth — drugged wine 
is not ; good meat is wealth — putrid meat is 
not ; good pictures are wealth — bad pictures 
are not. A thing is worth precisely what it 
can do for you ; not what you choose to pay 
for it. You may pay a thousand pounds for 
a cracked pipkin, if you please ; but you do not 
by that transaction make the cracked pipkin 
worth one that will hold water, nor that, nor 
any pipkin whatsoever, worth more than it was 
before you paid such sum for it. You may, 
perhaps, induce many potters to manufacture 
fissured pots, and many amateurs of clay to 
buy them ; but the nation is, through the whole 
business so encouraged, rich by the addition to 
its wealth of so many potsherds — and there an 
end. The thing is worth what it can do for you, 
not what you think it can ; and most national 
luxuries, now-a-days, are a form of potsherd 
provided for the solace of a self-complacent 
Job, voluntarily sedent on his ash-heap. 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 1 65 

126. And, also, so far as good things already 
exist, and have become media of exchange, the 
variations in their prices are absolutely indif- 
ferent to the nation. Whether Mr. A. buys 
a Titian from Mr. B. for twenty, or for two 
thousand, pounds, matters not sixpence to the 
national revenue : that is to say, it matters in 
nowise to the revenue whether Mr. A. has the 
picture, and Mr. B. the money, or Mr. B. the 
picture, and Mr. A. the money. Which of 
them will spend the money most wisel}^, and 
which of them will keep the picture most care- 
fully, is, indeed, a matter of some importance ; 
but this cannot be known by the mere fact of 
exchange. 

127. The wealth of a nation then, first, and 
its peace and well-being besides, depend on the 
number of persons it can employ in making 
good and useful things. I say its well-being 
also, for the character of men depends more on 
their occupations than on any teaching we can 
give them, or principles with which we can im- 
bue them. The employment forms the habits 
of body and mind, and these are the constitu- 
tion of the man ; — the greater part of his moral 
or persistent nature, whatever effort, under 



1 66 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

special excitement, he may make to change, or 
overcome them. Employment is the half, and 
the primal half, of education — it is the warp of 
it ; and the fineness or the endurance of all 
subsequently woven pattern depends wholly on 
its straightness and strength. And, whatever 
difficulty there may be in tracing through past 
history the remoter connections of event and 
cause, one chain of sequence is always clear : 
the formation, namely, of the character of 
nations by their employments, and the deter- 
mination of their final fate by their character. 
The moment, and the first direction of decisive 
revolutions, often depend on accident ; but 
their persistent course, and their consequences, 
depend wholly on the nature of the people. 
The passing of the Reform Bill by the late 
English Parliament may have been more or 
less accidental : the results of the measure now 
rest on the character of the English people, as 
it has been developed by their recent interests, 
occupations, and habits of life. Whether, as a 
body, they employ their new powers for good 
or evil, will depend not on their facilities of 
knowledge, nor even on the general intelligence 
they may possess; but on the number of persons 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 16/ 

among them whom wholesome employments 
have rendered familiar with the duties, and 
modest in their estimate of the promises, of 
Life. 

128. But especially in framing laws respect- 
ing the treatment or employment of improvident 
and more or less vicious persons, it is to be re- 
membered that as men are not made heroes by 
the performance of an act of heroism, but must 
be brave before they can perform it, so they 
are not made villains by the commission of a 
crime, but were villains before they committed 
it ; and that the right of public interference 
with their conduct begins when they begin to 
corrupt themselves; — not merely at the moment 
when they have proved themselves hopelessly 
corrupt. 

All measures of reformation are effective in 
exact proportion to their timeliness : partial 
decay may be cut away and cleansed ; incipient 
error corrected : but there is a point at which 
corruption can no more be stayed, nor wander- 
ing recalled. It has been the manner of modern 
philanthropy to remain passive until that precise 
period, and to leave the sick to perish, and the 
foolish to stray, while it spent itself in frantic 



1 68 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

exertions to raise the dead, and reform the 
dust. 

The recent direction of a great weight of 
public opinion against capital punishment is, I 
trust, the sign of an awakening perception that 
punishment is the last and worst instrument in 
the hands of the legislator for the prevention 
of crime. The true instruments of reformation 
are employment and reward ;— not punishment. 
Aid the willing, honour the virtuous, and com- 
pel the idle into occupation, and there will be 
no need for the compelling of any into the 
great and last indolence of death. 

129. The beginning of all true reformation 
among the criminal classes depends on the es- 
tablishment of institutions for their active em- 
ployment, while their criminality is still unripe, 
and their feelings of self-respect, capacities of 
affection, and sense of justice, not altogether 
quenched. That those who are desirous of em- 
ployment should always be able to find it, will 
hardly, at the present day, be disputed : but that 
those who are e^wdesirous of employment should 
of all persons be the most strictly compelled to 
it, the public are hardly yet convinced ; and 
they must be convinced. If the danger of the 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 1 69 

principal thoroughfares in their capital city, and 
the multiplication of crimes more ghastly than 
ever yet disgraced a nominal civilization, are 
not enough, they will not have to wait long 
before they receive sterner lessons. For our 
neglect of the lower orders has readied a point 
at which it begins to bear its necessary fruit, 
and every day makes the fields, not whiter, 
but more sable, to harvest. 

130. The general principles by which em- 
ployment should be regulated may be briefly 
stated as follows : — - 

1st. There being three great classes of me- 
chanical powers at our disposal, namely, (a) 
vital or muscular power ; (b) natural mechanical 
power of wind, water, and electricity ; and (c) 
artificially produced mechanical power ; it is the 
first principle of economy to use all available 
vital power first, then the inexpensive natural 
forces, and only at last to have recourse to 
artificial power. And this, because it is always 
better for a man to work with his own hands 
to feed and clothe himself, than to stand idle 
while a machine works for him ; and if he can- 
not, by all the labour healthily possible to him, 
feed and clothe himself, then it is better to use an 



170 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

inexpensive machine — as a windmill or water- 
mill — than a costly one like a steam-engine, so 
long as we have natural force enough at our 
disposal. Whereas at present we continually 
hear economists regret that the water power of 
the cascades or streams of a country should be 
lost, but hardly ever that the muscular power of 
its idle inhabitants should be lost ; and, again, 
we see vast districts, as the south of Provence, 
where a strong wind* blows steadily all day 
long for six days out of seven throughout the 
year, without a windmill, while men are con- 
tinually employed a hundred miles to the north, 
in digging fuel to obtain artificial power. But 
the principal point of all to be kept in view is, 
that in every idle arm and shoulder through- 
out the country there is a certain quantity of 
force, equivalent to the force of so much fuel ; 
and that it is mere insane waste to dig for coal 
for our force, while the vital force is unused ; 
and not only unused, but, in being so, corrupt- 
ing and polluting itself. We waste our coal, 
and spoil our humanity, at one and the same 

* In order fully to utilize this natural power, we require 
only machinery to turn the variable into a constant velocity 
— no insurmountable difficulty. 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. I7I 

instant. Therefore, wherever there is an idle 
arm, always save coal with it, and the stores of 
England will last all the longer. And precisely 
the same argument answers the common one 
about " taking employment out of the hands 
of the industrious labourer." Why, what is 
"employment" but the putting out of vital 
force instead of mechanical force ? We are con- 
tinually in search of means of strength, — to 
pull, to hammer, to fetch, to carry ; we waste 
our future resources to get this strength, while 
we leave all the living fuel to burn itself out in 
mere pestiferous breath, and production of its 
variously noisome forms of ashes ! Clearly, if 
we want fire for force, we want men for force 
first. The industrious hands must already have 
so much to do that they can do no more, or 
else we need not use machines to help them. 
Then use the idle hands first. Instead of 
dragging petroleum with a steam-engine, put it 
on a canal, and drag it with human arms and 
shoulders. Petroleum cannot possibly be in 
a hurry to arrive anywhere. We can always 
order that, and many other things, time enough 
before we want it. So, the carriage of every- 
thing which does not spoil by keeping may 



1/2 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

most wholesomely and safely be done by water- 
traction and sailing vessels; and no healthier 
work can men be put to, nor better discipline, 
than such active porterage. 

131. (2nd.) In employing all the muscular 
power at our disposal we are to make the 
employments we choose as educational as pos- 
sible. For a wholesome human employment is 
the first and best method of education, mental 
as well as bodily. A man taught to plough, 
row, or steer well, and a woman taught to 
cook properly, and make a dress neatly, are al- 
ready educated in many essential moral habits. 
Labour considered as a discipline has hitherto 
been thought of only for criminals ; but the 
real and noblest function of labour is to pre- 
vent crime, and not to be /?t'formatory, but 
Formatory. 

132. The third great principle of employment 
is, that whenever there is pressure of poverty 
to be met, all enforced occupation should be 
directed to the production of useful articles 
only, that is to say, of food, of simple clothing, 
of lodging, or of the means of conveying, dis- 
tributing, and preserving these. It is yet little 
understood by economists, and not at all by 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 1 73 

the public, that the employment of persons in 
a useless business cannot relieve ultimate dis- 
tress. The money given to employ riband- 
makers at Coventry is merely so much money 
withdrawn from what would have employed 
lace-makers at Honiton ; or makers of some- 
thing else, as useless, elsewhere. We must 
spend our money in some way, at some time, 
and it cannot at any time be spent without em- 
ploying somebod}'. If we gamble it away, the 
person who wins it must spend it ; if we lose 
it in a railroad speculation, it has gone into 
some one else's pockets, or merely gone to pay 
navvies for making a useless embankment, in- 
stead of to pay riband or button makers for 
making useless ribands or buttons ; we cannot 
lose it (unless by actually destroying it) without 
giving employment of some kind ; and therefore, 
whatever quantity of money exists, the relative 
quantity of employment must some day come 
out of it ; but the distress of the nation signi- 
fies that the employments given have produced 
nothing that will support its existence. Men 
cannot live. on ribands, or buttons, or velvet, 
or by going quickly from place to place ; and 
every coin spent in useless ornament, or useless 



174 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

motion, is so much withdrawn from the national 
means of Hfe. One of the most beautiful uses 
of railroads is to enable A to travel from the 
town of X to take away the business of B in 
the town of Y ; while, in the meantime, B 
travels from the town of Y to take away A's 
business in the town of X. But the national 
wealth is not increased by these operations. 
Whereas every coin spent in cultivating ground, 
in repairing lodging, in making necessary and 
good roads, in preventing danger by sea or 
land, and in carriage of food or fuel where they 
are required, is so much absolute and direct 
gain to the whole nation. To cultivate land 
round Coventry makes living easier at Honiton, 
and every acre of sand gained from the sea in 
Lincolnshire, makes life easier all over England. 
4th, and lastly. Since for every idle person, 
some one else must be working somewhere to 
provide him with clothes and food, and doing, 
therefore, double the quantity of work that 
would be enough for his own needs, it is only 
a matter of pure justice to compel the idle per- 
son to work for his maintenance himself. The 
conscription has been used in many countries, 
to take away labourers who supported their 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 1/5 

families, from their useful work, and maintain 
them for purposes chiefly of military display at 
the public expense. Since this has been long- 
endured by the most civilized nations, let it 
not be thought that they would not much more 
gladly endure a conscription which should 
seize only the vicious and idle, already living 
by criminal procedures at the public expense ; 
and which should discipline and educate them 
to labour which would not only maintain them- 
selves, but be serviceable to the commonwealth. 
The question is simply this : — we must feed 
the drunkard, vagabond, and thief; — but shall 
we do so by letting them steal their food, and 
do no work for it ? or shall we give them their 
food in appointed quantity, and enforce their 
doing work which shall be worth it ? and which, 
in process of time, will redeem their own cha- 
racters, and make them happy and serviceable 
members of society ? 

I find by me a violent little fragment of un- 
delivered lecture, which puts this, perhaps, still 
more clearly. Your idle people, (it says,) as 
they are now, are not merely waste coal-beds. 
They are explosive coal-beds, which you pay 
a high annual rent for. You are keeping all 



176 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

these idle persons, remember, at far greater 
cost than if they were busy. Do you think a 
vicious person eats less than an honest one ? 
or that it is cheaper to keep a bad man drunk, 
than a good man sober ? There is, I suppose, 
a dim idea in the mind of the public, that they 
don't pay for the maintenance of people they 
don't employ. Those staggering rascals at the 
street corner, grouped around its splendid 
angle of public-house, we fancy they are no 
servants of ours ! that we pay them no wages ! 
that no cash out of our pocket is spent over 
that beer-stained counter ! 

Whose cash is it then they are spend- 
ing ? It is not got honestly by work. You 
know that much. Where do they get it from ? 
Who has paid for their dinner and their pot ? 
Those fellows can live only in one of two ways 
— by pillage or beggary. Their annual income 
by thieving comes out of the public pocket, you 
will admit. They are not cheaply fed, so far 
as they are fed by theft. But the rest of their 
living — all that they don't steal — they must beg. 
Not with success from you, you think. Wise 
as benevolent, you never gave a penny in 
" indiscriminate charity." Well, I congratulate 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 1 7/ 

you on the freedom of your conscience from 
that sin, mine being bitterly burdened with 
the memory of many a sixpence given to beg- 
gars of whom I knew nothing, but that they 
had pale faces and thin waists. But it is not 
that kind of street beggary that the vagabonds 
of our people chiefly practise. It is home beg- 
gary that is the worst beggars' trade. Home 
alms which it is their worst degradation to 
receive. Those scamps know well enough that 
you and your wisdom are worth nothing to 
them. They won't beg of you. They will beg 
of their sisters, and mothers, and wives, and 
children, and of any one else who is enough 
ashamed of being of the same blood with them 
to pay to keep them out of sight. Every one 
of those blackguards is the bane of a family. 
That IS the deadly " indiscriminate charity " — 
the charity which each household pays to main- 
tain its own private curse. 

133. And you think that is no affair of 
yours ? and that every family ought to watch 
over and subdue its own living plague ? Put 
it to yourselves this way, then : suppose you 
knew every one of those families kept an idol 
in an inner room — a big-bellied bronze figure, 

12 



1/8 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

to which daily sacrifice and oblation was made ; 
at whose feet so much beer and brandy were 
poured out every morning on the ground ; and 
before which, every night, good meat, enough 
for two men's keep, was set, and left, till it 
was putrid, and then carried out and thrown 
on the dunghill ; — you would put an end to 
that form of idolatry with your best diligence, 
I suppose. You would understand then that 
the beer, and brandy, and meat, were wasted ; 
and that the burden imposed by each house- 
hold on itself lay heavily through them on the 
whole community ? But, suppose farther, that 
this idol were not of silent and quiet bronze 
only ; — but an ingenious mechanism, wound 
up every morning, to run itself down in auto- 
matic blasphemies ; that it struck and tore with 
its hands the people who set food before it ; 
that it was anointed with poisonous unguents, 
and infected the air for miles round. You 
would interfere with the idolatry then, straight- 
way ? Will you not interfere with it now, 
when the infection that the venomous idol 
spreads is not merely death — but sin ? 

134. So far the old lecture. Returning to 
cool English, the end of the matter is, that 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 1 79 

sooner or later, we shall have to register our 
people ; and to know how they live ; and to 
make sure, if they are capable of work, that 
right work is given them to do. 

The different classes of work for which 
bodies of men could be consistently organized, 
might ultimately become numerous ; these fol- 
lowing divisions of occupation may at once be 
suggested : — 

1. Road-making. — Good roads to be made, 
wherever needed, and kept in repair ; and the 
annual loss on unfrequented roads, in spoiled 
horses, strained wheels, and time, done away 
with. 

2. Bringing in of ivaste land. — All waste 
lands not necessary for public health, to be 
made accessible and gradually reclaimed ; chiefly 
our wide and waste seashores. Not our moun- 
tains nor moorland. Our life depends on them, 
more than on the best arable we have. 

3. Harbour -making. — The deficiencies of 
safe or convenient harbourage in our smaller 
ports to be remedied ; other harbours built at 
dangerous points of coast, and a disciplined 
body of men always kept in connection with 
the pilot and life-boat services. There is room 



l80 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

for every order of intelligence in this work, and 
for a large body of superior officers. 

4. Portcmgi'. —All heavy goods, not requiring 
speed in transit, to be carried (under preven- 
tive duty on transit by railroad) by canal-boats, 
employing men for draught ; and the merchant- 
shipping service extended by sea ; so that no 
ships may be wrecked for want of hands, while 
there are idle ones in mischief on shore. 

5. Repair of buildings. — A body of men in 
various trades to be kept at the disposal of the 
authorities in every large town, for repair of 
buildings, especially the houses of the poorer 
orders, who, if no such provisions were made, 
could not employ workmen on their own houses, 
but would simply live with rent walls and roofs. 

6. Dressmaking. — Substantial dress, of stan- 
dard material and kind, strong shoes, and stout 
bedding, to be manufactured for the poor, so 
as to render it unnecessary for them, unless 
by extremity of improvidence, to wear cast 
clothes, or be without sufficiency of clothing. 

7. IVorks of Art. — Schools to be established 
on thoroughly sound principles of manufacture, 
and use of materials, and with simple and, for 
given periods, unalterable modes of work; first. 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. l8l 

in pottery, and embracing gradually metal work, 
sculpture, and decorative painting ; the two 
points insisted upon, in distinction from ordi- 
nary commercial establishments, being perfect- 
ness of material to the utmost attainable degree ; 
and the production of everything by hand- work, 
for the special purpose of developing personal 
power and skill in the workman. 

The two last departments, and some subor- 
dinate branches of the others, would include the 
service of women and children. 

I give now, for such farther illustration as 
they contain of the points I desire most to 
insist upon with respect both to education and 
employment, a portion of the series of notes 
published some time ago in the Art Journal, 
on the opposition of Modesty and Liberty, and 
the unescapable law of wise restraint. I am 
sorry that they are written obscurely ; — and it 
may be thought affectedly : — but the fact is, I 
have always had three different ways of writ- 
ing : one, with the single view of making myself 
understood, in which I necessarily omit a great 
deal of what comes into my head ; another, in 
which I say what I think ought to be said, in 
what I suppose to be the best words 1 can find 



1 82 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

for it ; (which is in reality an affected style — be 
it good or bad ;) and my third way of writing is 
to say all that comes into my head for my own 
pleasure, in the first words that come, retouch- 
ing them afterwards into (approximate) gram- 
mar. These notes for the Art Journal were so 
written ; and I like them myself, of course ; but 
ask the reader's pardon for their confusedness. 
135. " Sir, it cannot be better done." 
We will insist, with the reader's permission, 
on this comfortful saying of Albert Diirer's, in 
order to find out, if we may, what Modesty is ; 
which it will be well for painters, readers, and 
especially critics, to know, before going farther. 
What it is ; or, rather, who she is ; her fingers 
being among the deftest in laying the ground- 
threads of Aglaia's cestus. 

For this same opinion of Albert's is enter- 
tained by many other people respecting their 
own doings — a very prevalent opinion, indeed, 
I find it ; and the answer itself, though rarely 
made with the Nuremberger's crushing deci- 
sion, is nevertheless often enough imitated, with 
deUcacy, by artists of all countries, in their 
various dialects. Neither can it always be held 
an entirely modest one, as it assuredly was in 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 1 83 

the man who would sometimes estimate a piece 
of his unconquerable work at only the worth of 
a plate of fruit, or a flask of wine — would have 
taken even one " fig for it," kindly offered ; or 
given it royally for nothing, to show his hand 
to a fellow-king of his own, or any other craft — 
as Gainsborough gave the " Boy at the Stile " 
for a solo on the violin. An entirely modest 
sa3dng, I repeat in him — not always in us. For 
Modesty is " the measuring virtue," the virtue 
of modes or limits. She is, indeed, said to be 
only the third or youngest of the children of the 
cardinal virtue, Temperance ; and apt to be de- 
spised, being more given to arithmetic, and other 
vulgar studies (Cinderella-like) than her elder 
sisters : but she is useful in the household, and 
arrives at great results with her yard-measure 
and slate-pencil — a pretty little Marchande des 
Modes, cutting her dress always according to 
the silk (if this be the proper feminine reading 
of "coat according to the cloth"), so that, con- 
sulting with her carefully of a morning, men 
get to know not only their income, but their in- 
being — to know themselves, that is, in a ganger's 
manner, round, and up and down — surface and 
contents ; what is in them, and what may be 



184 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

got out of them ; and, in fine, their entire canon 
of weight and capacity. That yard-measure of 
Modesty's, lent to those who will use it, is a 
curious musical reed, and will go round and 
round waists that are slender enough, with 
latent melody in every joint of it, the dark root 
only being soundless, moist from the wave 
wherein 

" Null' altra pianta che facesse fronda 
O inckirasse, puote aver vita.'' * 

Bat when the little sister herself takes it in 
hand, to measure things outside of us with, the 
joints shoot out in an amazing manner : the 
four-square walls even of celestial cities being 
measurable enough by that reed ; and the way 
pointed to them, though only to be followed, 
or even seen, in the dim starlight shed down 
from worlds amidst which there is no name of 
Measure any more, though the reality of it 
always. For, indeed, to all true modesty the 
necessary business is not inlook, but outlook, 
and especially uplook : it is only her sister. 
Shamefaced ness, who is known by the drooping 
lashes — Modesty, quite otherwise, by her large 

* Piirgatoyio, i. 103. 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 1 85 

eyes full of wonder ; for she never contemns 
herself, nor is ashamed of herself, but forgets 
herself — at least until she has done something 
worth memory. It is easy to peep and potter 
about one's own deficiencies in a quite immodest 
discontent ; but Modesty is so pleased with 
other people's doings, that she has no leisure to 
lament her own : and thus, knowing the fresh 
feeling of contentment, unstained with thought 
of self, she does not fear being pleased, when 
there is cause, with her own rightness, as with 
another's, saying calmly, " Be it mine, or yours, 
or whose else's it may, it is no matter ; — this 
also is well." But the right to say such a thing 
depends on continual reverence, and manifold 
sense of failure. If you have known yourself 
to have failed, you may trust, when it comes, 
the strange consciousness of success ; if you 
have faithfully loved the noble work of others, 
you need not fear to speak with respect of 
things duly done, of your own. 

136. But the principal good that comes of 
art's being followed in this reverent feeling is 
vitally manifest in the associative conditions of 
it. Men who know their place can take it and 
keep it, be it low or high, contentedly and 



l86 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

firmly, neither yielding nor grasping ; and the 
harmony of hand and thought follows, rendering 
all great deeds of art possible — deeds in which 
the souls of men meet like the jewels in the 
windows of Aladdin's palace, the little gems and 
the large all equally pure, needing no cement 
but the fitting of facets ; while the associative 
work of immodest men is all jointless, and astir 
with wormy ambition ; putridly dissolute, and 
for ever on the crawl : so that if it come to- 
gether for a time, it can only be by metamor- 
phosis through flash of volcanic fire out of 
the vale of Siddim, vitrifying the clay of it, 
and fastening the slime, only to end in wilder 
scattering ; according to the fate of those oldest, 
mightiest, immodestest of builders, of whom it 
is told in scorn, " They had brick for stone, and 
slime had they for mortar." 

137. The first function of Modesty, then, 
being this recognition of place, her second is 
the recognition of law, and delight in it, for 
the sake of law itself, whether her part be to 
assert it, or obey. For as it belongs to all im- 
modesty to defy or deny law, and assert privi- 
lege and licence according to its own pleasure 
(it being therefore rightly called " insokiit," 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 1 8/ 

that is, " custom-breaking/' violating some usual 
and appointed order to attain for itself greater 
forwardness or power), so it is the habit of all 
modesty to love the constancy and " so/oimhy," 
or, literally, " accustomedness," of law, seeking 
first what are the solemn, appointed, inviolable 
customs and general orders of nature, and of 
the Master of nature, touching the matter in 
hand ; and striving to put itself, as habitually 
and inviolably, in compliance with them. Out 
of which habit, once established, arises what 
is rightly called " conscience," not " science " 
merely, but " with-science," a science " with 
us," such as only modest creatures can have — 
with or within them — and within all creation 
besides, every member of it, strong or weak, 
witnessing together, and joining in the happy 
consciousness that each one's work is good : 
the bee also being profoundly of that opinion ; 
and the lark ; and the swallow, in that noisy, 
but modestly upside-down Babel of hers, under 
the eaves, with its unvolcanic slime for mortar ; 
and the two ants who are asking of each other 
at the turn of that little ant's-foot-worn path 
through the moss, " lor via e lor fortuna " ; and 
the builders also, who built yonder pile of 



1 88 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

cloud-marble in the west, and the gilder who 
gilded it, and is gone down behind it. 

138. But I think we shall better understand 
what we ought of the nature of Modesty, and 
of her opposite, by taking a simple instance of 
both, in the practice of that art of music which 
the wisest have agreed in thinking the first ele- 
ment of education ; only I must ask the reader's 
patience with me through a parenthesis. 

Among the foremost men whose power has 
had to assert itself, though with conquest, yet 
with countless loss, through peculiarly English 
disadvantages of circumstance, are assuredly to 
be ranked together, both for honour and for 
mourning, Thomas Bewick and George Cruik- 
shank. There is, however, less cause for regret 
in the instance of Bewick. We may under- 
stand that it was well for us, once, to see what 
an entirely powerful painter's genius, and an 
entirely keen and true man's temper, could 
achieve together, unhelped, but also unharmed, 
among the black banks and wolds of Tyne. 
But the genius of Cruikshank has been cast 
away in an utterly ghastly and lamentable 
manner : his superb line-work, worthy of any 
class of subject, and his powers of conception 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 1 89 

and composition, of which I cannot venture to 
estimate the range in their degraded appHcation, 
having been condemned, by his fate, to be spent 
either in rude jesting, or in vain war with con- 
ditions of vice too low ahke for record or re- 
buke, among the dregs of the British populace. 
Yet perhaps I am wrong in regretting even 
this : it may be an appointed lesson for futurity, 
that the art of the best English etcher in the 
nineteenth century, spent on illustrations of the 
lives of burglars and drunkards, should one day 
be seen in museums beneath Greek vases fretted 
with drawings of the wars of Troy, or side by 
side with Durer's "Knight and Death." 

139. Be that as it may, I am at present glad 
to be able to refer to one of these perpetuations, 
by his strong hand, of such human character 
as our faultless British constitution occasion- 
ally produces, in out-of-the-way corners. It is 
among his illustrations of the Irish Rebellion, 
and represents the pillage and destruction of a 
gentleman's house by the mob. They have made 
a heap in the drawing-room of the furniture 
and books, to set first fire to ; and are tearing 
up the floor for its more easily kindled planks : 
the less busily-disposed meanwhile hacking 



igO THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

round in rage, with axes, and smashing what 
they can with butt-ends of guns. I do not 
care to follow with words the ghastly truth of 
the picture into its detail ; but the most expres- 
sive incident of the whole, and the one imme- 
diately to my purpose, is this, that one fellow 
has sat himself at the piano, on which, hitting 
down fiercely with his clenched fists, he plays, 
grinning, such tune as may be so producible, 
to which melody two of his companions, flour- 
ishing knotted sticks, dance, after their manner, 
on the top of the instrument. 

140. I think we have in this conception as 
perfect an instance as we require of the lowest 
supposable phase of immodest or licen^;ious art 
in music ; the " inner consciousness of good " 
being dim, even in the musician and his audi- 
ence ; and wholly unsympathized with, and un- 
acknowledged, by the Delphian, Vestal, and all 
other prophetic and cosmic powers. This re- 
presented scene came into my mind suddenly, 
one evening a few weeks ago, in contrast with 
another which I was watching in its reality ; 
namely, a group of gentle school-girls, leaning 
over Mr. Charles Halle as he was playing a 
variation on " Home, sweet Home." They had 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. IQI 

sustained with unwonted courage the glance of 
subdued indignation with which, having just 
closed a rippling melody of Sebastian Bach's, 
(much like what one might fancy the singing 
of nightingales would be if they fed on honey 
instead of flies,) he turned to the slight, popu- 
lar air. But they had their own associations 
with it, and besought for, and obtained it ; 
and pressed close, at first, in vain, to see what 
no glance could follow, the traversing of the 
fingers. They soon thought no more of see- 
ing. The wet eyes, round-open, and the little 
scarlet upper lips, lifted, and drawn slightly 
together, in passionate glow of utter wonder, be- 
came picture-like, — porcelain-like, — in motion- 
less joy, as the sweet multitude of low notes 
fell in their timely infinities, like summer rain. 
Only La Robbia himself (nor even he, unless 
with tenderer use of colour than is usual in 
his work) could have rendered some image of 
that listening. 

141. But if the reader can give due vitality 
in his fancy to these two scenes, he will have 
in them representative types, clear enough for 
all future purpose, of the several agencies of 
debased and perfect art. And the interval may 



192 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

easily and continuously be filled by mediate 
gradations. Between the entirely immodest, un- 
measured, and (in evil sense) unmannered, exe- 
cution with the fist ; and the entirely modest, 
measured, and (in the noblest sense) mannered, 
or moral'd, execution with the finger; — between 
the impatient and unpractised doing, contain- 
ing in itself the witness of lasting impatience 
and idleness through all previous life, and the 
patient and practised doing, containing in itself 
the witness of self-restraint and unwearied toil 
through all previous life ; — between the ex- 
pressed subject and sentiment of home love ; — 
between the sympathy of audience given in 
irreverent and contemptuous rage, joyless as 
the rabidness of a dog, and the sympathy of 
audience given in an almost appalled humility 
of intense, rapturous, and yet entirely reason- 
ing and reasonable pleasure ; — between these 
two limits of octave, the reader will find he can 
class, according to its modesty, usefulness, and 
grace, or becomingness, all other musical art. 
For although purity of purpose and fineness of 
execution by no means go together, degree to 
degree, (since fine, and indeed all but the finest, 
work is often spent in the most wanton purpose 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. I93 

— as in all our modern opera — -and the rudest 
execution is again often joined with purest pur- 
pose, as in a mother's song to her child), still the 
entire accomplishment of music is only in the 
union of both. For the difference between that 
"all but" finest and "finest" is an infinite 
one ; and besides this, however the power of the 
performer, once attained, may be afterwards 
misdirected, in slavery to popular passion or 
childishness, and spend itself, at its sweetest, in 
idle melodies, cold and ephemeral (like Michael 
Angelo's snow statue in the other art), or else 
in vicious difficulty and miserable noise — crack- 
ling of thorns under the pot of public sensuality 
— still, the attainment of this power, and the 
maintenance of it, involve always in the execu- 
tant some virtue or courage of high kind ; the 
understanding of which, and of the difference 
between the discipline which develops it and 
the disorderly efforts of the amateur, it will be 
one of our first businesses to estimate rightly. 
And though not indeed by degree to degree, yet 
in essential relation (as of winds to waves, the 
one being always the true cause of the other, 
though they are not necessarily of equal force at 
the same time), we shall find vice in its varieties, 



194 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

with art-failure, — and virtue in its varieties, 
with art-success, ^ — fall and rise together : the 
peasant-girl's song at her spinning-wheel, the 
peasant-labourer's " to the oaks and rills," — 
domestic music, feebly yet sensitively skilful, — 
music for the multitude, of beneficent, or of 
traitorous power, — dance-melodies, pure and 
orderly, or foul and frantic, — march-music, bla- 
tant in mere fever of animal pugnacity, or ma- 
jestic with force of national duty and memory, 
— song music, reckless, sensual, sickly, slov^enly, 
forgetful even of the foolish words it effaces 
with foolish noise, — or thoughtful, sacred, 
healthful, artful, for ever sanctifying noble 
thought with separately distinguished loveliness 
of belonging sound, — all these families and 
gradations of good or evil, however mingled, 
follow, in so far as they are good, one constant 
law of virtue (or " life-strength," which is the 
literal meaning of the word, and its intended 
one, in wise men's mouths), and in so far as 
they are evil, are evil by outlawry and unvirtue, 
or death-weakness. Then, passing wholly be- 
yond the domain of death, we may still imagine 
the ascendant nobleness of the art, through all 
the concordant life of incorrupt creatures, and 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 1 95 

a continually deeper harmony of " piiissaiil 
words and murmurs made to bless," until we 
reach 



'The undisturbed song of pure concent, 
Aye sung before the sapphire-coloured 



ired throne." 

142. And SO far as the sister arts can be 
conceived to have place or office, their virtues 
are subject to a law absolutely the same as 
that of music, only extending its authority into 
more various conditions, owing to the intro- 
duction of a distinctly representative and his- 
torical power, which acts under logical as well 
as mathematical restrictions, and is capable of 
endlessly changeful fault, fallacy, and defeat, as 
well as of endlessly manifold victory. 

143. Next to Modesty, and her delight in 
measures, let us reflect a little on the character 
of her adversary, the Goddess of Liberty, and 
her delight in absence of measures, or in false 
ones. It is true that there are liberties and 
liberties. Yonder torrent, crystal-clear, and 
arrow-swift, with its spray leaping into the 
air like white troops of fawns, is free enough. 
Lost, presently, amidst bankless, boundless 
marsh — soaking in slow shallowness, as it will, 



196 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

hither and thither, hstless, among the poison- 
ous reeds and unresisting shme — it is free also. 
We may choose which hberty we Uke, — the 
restraint of voiceful rock, or the dumb and 
edgeless shore of darkened sand. Of that evil 
liberty, which men are now glorifying, and pro- 
claiming as essence of gospel to all the earth, 
and will presently, I suppose, proclaim also to 
the stars, with invitation to them out of their 
courses, — and of its opposite continence, which 
is the clasp and ')(^pvaer) irepovi] of Aglaia's cestus, 
we must try to find out something true. For no 
quality of Art has been more powerful in its 
influence on public mind ; none is more fre- 
quently the subject of popular praise, or the end 
of vulgar effort, than what we call " Freedom." 
It is necessary to determine the justice or in- 
justice of this popular praise. 

144. I said, a little while ago, that the practi- 
cal teaching of the masters of Art was summed 
by the O of Giotto. " You may judge my 
masterhood of craft," Giotto tells us, "by seeing 
that I can draw a circle unerringly." And we 
may safely believe him, understanding him to 
mean, that — though more may be necessary to 
an artist than such a power — at least this power 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. I97 

is necessary. The qualities of hand and eye 
needful to do this are the first conditions of 
artistic craft. 

145. Try to draw a circle yourself with the 
" free" hand, and with a single line. You can- 
not do it if your hand trembles, nor if it hesi- 
tates, nor if it is unmanageable, nor if it is in 
the common sense of the word " free." So far 
from being free, it must be under a control as 
absolute and accurate as if it were fastened 
to an inflexible bar of steel. And yet it must 
move, under this necessary control, with perfect, 
untormented serenity of ease, 

146. That is the condition of all good work 
whatsoever. All freedom is error. Every line 
you lay down is either right or wrong : it may 
be timidly and awkwardly wrong, or fearlessly 
and impudently wrong : the aspect of the im- 
pudent wrongness is pleasurable to vulgar per- 
sons ; and is what they commonly call " free " 
execution: the timid, tottering, hesitating wrong- 
ness is rarely so attractive ; yet sometimes, if 
accompanied with good qualities, and right aims 
in other directions, it becomes in a manner 
charming, like the inarticulateness of a child : 
but, whatever the charm or manner of the error 



198 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

there is but one question ultimately to be asked 
respecting every line you draw, Is it right or 
wrong ? If right, it most assuredly is not a 
" free " line, but an intensely continent, re- 
strained, and considered line ; and the action of 
the hand in laying it is just as decisive, and 
just as "free" as the hand of a first-rate surgeon 
in a critical incision. A great operator told me 
that his hand could check itself within about 
the two-hundredth of an inch, in penetrating 
a membrane ; and this, of course, without the 
help of sight, by sensation only. With help 
of sight, and in action on a substance which 
does not quiver nor yield, a fine artist's line is 
measurable in its purposed direction to con- 
siderably less than the thousandth of an inch. 

A wide freedom, truly ! 

147. The conditions of popular art which 
most foster the common ideas about freedom, 
are merely results of irregularly energetic effort 
by men imperfectly educated ; these conditions 
being variously mingled with cruder manner- 
isms resulting from timidity, or actual imperfec- 
tion of body. Northern hands and eyes are, of 
course, never so subtle as Southern ; and in 
very cold countries, artistic execution is palsied. 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. I99 

The effort to break through this timidity, or to 
refine the bluntness, may lead to a hcentious 
impetuosity, or an ostentatious minuteness. 
Every man's manner has this kind of relation 
to some defect in his physical powers or modes 
of thought ; so that in the greatest work there 
is no manner visible. It is at first uninterest- 
ing from its quietness; the majesty of restrained 
power only dawns gradually upon us, as we 
walk towards its horizon. 

There is, indeed, often great delightfulness 
in the innocent manners of artists who have 
real power and honesty, and draw, in this way 
or that, as best they can, under such and such 
untoward circumstances of life. But the greater 
part of the looseness, flimsiness, or audacity of 
modern work is the expression of an inner spirit 
of licence in mind and heart, connected, as I 
said, with the peculiar folly of this age, its hope 
of, and trust in, " liberty." Of which we must 
reason a little in more general terms. 

148. I believe we can nowhere find a better 
type of a perfectly free creature than in the com- 
mon house fly. Nor free only, but brave ; and 
irreverent to a degree which I think no hu- 
man republican could by any philosophy exalt 



200 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

himself to. There is no courtesy in him ; he does 
not care whether it is king or clown whom he 
teases ; and in every step of his swift mechanical 
march, and in every pause of his resolute ob- 
servation, there is one and the same expression 
of perfect egotism, perfect independence and 
self-confidence, and conviction of the world's 
having been made for flies. Strike at him with 
your hand ; and to him, the mechanical fact 
and external aspect of the matter is, what to 
you it would be, if an acre of red clay, ten feet 
thick, tore itself up from the ground in one 
massive field, hovered over you in the air for 
a second, and came crashing down with an 
aim. That is the external aspect of it ; the 
inner aspect, to his fly's mind, is of a quite 
natural and unimportant occurrence — one of 
the momentary conditions of his active life. 
He steps out of the way of your hand, and 
alights on the back of it. You cannot terrify 
him, nor govern him, nor persuade him, nor 
convince him. He has his own positive opinion 
on all matters ; not an unwise one, usually, for 
his own ends ; and will ask no advice of yours. 
He has no work to do — no tyrannical instinct 
to obey. The earthworm has his digging , the 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 201 

bee her gathering and building ; the spider 
her cunning network ; the ant her treasury and 
accounts. All these are comparatively slaves, 
or people of vulgar business. But your fly, 
free in the air, free in the chamber — a black in- 
carnation of caprice — wandering, investigating, 
flitting, flirting, feasting at his will, with rich 
variety of choice in feast, from the heaped 
sweets in the grocer's window to those of the 
butcher's back-yard, and from the galled place 
on your cab-horse's back, to the brown spot in 
the road, from which, as the hoof disturbs 
him, he rises with angry republican buzz — what 
freedom is like his ? 

149. For captivity, again, perhaps your poor 
watch-dog is as sorrowful a type as 3^ou will 
easily find. Mine certainly is. The day is 
lovely, but I must write this, and cannot go out 
with him. He is chained in the yard, because 
I do not like dogs in rooms, and the gardener 
does not like dogs in gardens. He has no 
books, — nothing but his own weary thoughts 
for company, and a group of those free flies 
whom he snaps at, with sudden ill success. 
Such dim hope as he may have that I may yet 
take him out with me, will be, hour by hour. 



202 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

wearily disappointed ; or, worse, darkened at 
once into a leaden despair by an authoritative 
" No " — too well understood. His fidelity only 
seals his fate ; if he would not watch for me, he 
would be sent away, and go hunting with some 
happier master : but he watches, and is wise, 
and faithful, and miserable : and his high animal 
intellect only gives him the wistful powers of 
wonder, and sorrow, and desire, and affection, 
which embitter his captivity. Yet of the two, 
would we rather be watch-dog, or fly ? 

150. Indeed, the first point we have all to 
determine is not how free we are, but what kind 
of creatures we are. It is of small import- 
ance to any of us whether we get liberty ; but 
of the greatest that we deserve it. Whether 
we can win it, fate must determine; but that 
we will be worthy of it, we may ourselves de- 
termine ; and the sorrowfullest fate, of all that 
we can suffer, is to have it, ivithout deserving 
it. 

151. I have hardly patience to hold my pen 
and go on writing, as I remember (I would 
that it were possible for a few consecutive in- 
stants to forget) the infinite follies of modern 
thought in this matter, centred in the notion 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 2O3 

that liberty is good for a man, irrespectively 
of the use he is likely to make of it. Folly 
unfathomable ! unspeakable ! unendurable to 
look in the full face of, as the laugh of a cretin. 
You will send your child, will you, into a room 
where a table is loaded with sweet wine and 
fruit — some poisoned, some not ? — you will 
say to him, " Choose freely, my little child ! 
It is so good for you to have freedom of 
choice ; it forms your character — your indi- 
viduality ! If you take the wrong cup, or the 
wrong berry, you will die before the day is 
over, but you will have acquired the dignity 
of a Free child " ? 

152. You think that puts the case too 
sharply ? I tell you, lover of liberty, there is 
no choice offered to you, but it is similarly 
between Hfe and death. There is no act, nor 
option of act, possible, but the wrong deed, 
or option, has poison in it, which will stay in 
your veins thereafter for ever. Never more to 
all eternity can you be as you might have been, 
had you not done that — chosen that. You 
have " formed your character," forsooth ! No ! 
if you have chosen ill, you have Deformed 
it, and that for ever ! In some choices, it had 



204 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

been better for you that a red-hot iron bar 
had struck you aside, scarred and helpless, 
than that you had so chosen. " You will know 
better next time ! " No. Next time will never 
come. Next time the choice will be in quite 
another aspect — between quite different things, 
— you, weaker than you were by the evil into 
which you have fallen ; it, more doubtful than 
it was, by the increased dimness of your sight. 
No one ever gets wiser by doing wrong, nor 
stronger. You will get wiser and stronger only 
by doing right, whether forced or not ; the prime, 
the one need is to do tJiat, under whatever com- 
pulsion, till you can do it without compulsion. 
And then you are a Man. 

153. "What!" a wayward youth might 
perhaps answer, incredulously ; " no one ever 
gets wiser by doing wrong ? Shall I not know 
the world best by trying the wrong of it, and 
repenting ? Have I not, even as it is, learned 
much by many of my errors ? " Indeed, the 
effort by which partially you recovered your- 
self was precious ; that part of your thought by 
which you discerned the error was precious. 
What wisdom and strength you kept, and 
rightly used, are rewarded ; and in the pain and 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 205 

the repentance, and in the acquaintance with 
the aspects of folly and sin, you have learned 
something; how much less than you would have 
learned in right paths, can never be told, but 
that it is less is certain. Your liberty of choice 
has simply destroyed for you so much life and 
strength, never regainable. It is true you now 
know the habits of swine, and the taste of husks : 
do you think your father could not have taught 
you to know better habits and pleasanter tastes, 
if you had stayed in his house; and that the know- 
ledge you have lost would not have been more, 
as well as sweeter, than that you have gained ? 
But "it so forms my individuality to be free ! " 
Your individuality was given you by God, and 
in your race ; and if you have any to speak 
of, you will want no liberty. You will want a 
den to work in, and peace, and light — no more, 
— in absolute need ; if more, in anywise, it will 
still not be liberty, but direction, instruction, 
reproof, and sympathy. But if you have no 
individuality, if there is no true character nor 
true desire in you, then you will indeed want 
to be free. You will begin early ; and, as a 
boy, desire to be a man ; and, as a man, think 
yourself as good as every other. You will 



206 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

choose freely to cat, freely to drink, freely to 
stagger and fall, freely, at last to curse yourself 
and die. Death is the only real freedom possi- 
ble to us : and that is consummate freedom, — 
permission for every particle in the rotting 
body to leave its neighbour particle, and shift 
for itself. You call it *' corruption " in the 
flesh ; but before it comes to that, all liberty is 
an equal corruption in mind. You ask for free- 
dom of thought ; but if you have not sufficient 
grounds for thought, you have no business to 
think ; and if you have sufficient grounds, you 
have no business to think wrong. Only one 
thought is possible to you, if you are wise — 
your liberty is geometrically proportionate to 
your folly. 

154. "But all this glory and activity of our 
age; what are they owing to, but to our freedom 
of thought ? " In a measure, they are owing — 
what good is in them — to the discovery of 
many lies, and the escape from the power of 
evil. Not to liberty, but to the deliverance 
from evil or cruel masters. Brave men have 
dared to examine lies which had long been 
taught, not because they were /;r<?-thinkers, 
but because they were such stern and close 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 20/ 

thinkers that the he could no longer escape 
them. Of course the restriction of thought, 
or of its expression, by persecution, is merely 
a form of violence, justifiable or not, as other 
violence is, according to the character of the 
persons against whom it is exercised, and the 
divine and eternal laws which it vindicates or 
violates. We must not burn a man alive for 
saying that the Athanasian creed is ungram- 
matical, nor stop a bishop's salary because we 
are getting the worst of an argument with him ; 
neither must we let drunken men howl in 
the public streets at night. There is much 
that is true in the part of Mr. Mill's essay on 
Liberty which treats of freedom of thought ; 
some important truths are there beautifully ex- 
pressed, but many, quite vital, are omitted ; and 
the balance, therefore, is wrongly struck. The 
liberty of expression, with a great nation, would 
become like that in a well-educated company, 
in which there is indeed freedom of speech, 
but not of clamour ; or like that in an ordinary 
senate, in which men who deserve to be heard, 
are heard in due time, and under determined 
restrictions. The degree of liberty you can 
rightly grant to a number of men is commonly 



208 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

in the inverse ratio of their desire for it; 
and a general hush, or call to order, would be 
often very desirable in this England of ours. 
For the rest, of any good or evil extant, it is 
impossible to say what measure is owing to 
restraint, and what to licence, where the right 
is balanced between them. I was not a little 
provoked one day, a summer or two since in 
Scotland, because the Duke of Athol hindered me 
from examining the gneiss and slate junctions 
in Glen Tilt, at the hour convenient to me : 
but I saw them at last, and in quietness ; and 
to the very restriction that annoyed me, owed, 
probably, the fact of their being in existence, 
instead of being blasted away by a mob-com- 
pany ; while the " free " paths and inlets of 
Loch Katrine and the Lake of Geneva are for 
ever trampled down and destroyed, not by one 
duke, but by tens of thousands of ignorant 
tyrants. 

155. So, a Dean and Chapter may, perhaps, 
unjustifiably charge me twopence for seeing a 
cathedral ; — but your free mob pulls spire and 
all down about my ears, and I can see no more 
for ever. And even if I cannot get up to the 
granite junctions in the glen, the stream comes 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 209 

down from them pure to the Garry : but in 
Beddington Park I am stopped by the newly 
erected fence of a building speculator ; and 
the bright Wandel (Pope's 'blue transparent 
Wandle '), of divine waters as Castaly, is filled 
by the free public with old shoes, obscene 
crockery, and ashes. 

156. In fine, the arguments for liberty may 
in general be summed in a few very simple 
forms, as follows : — 

Misguiding is mischievous : therefore guid- 
ing is. 

If the bUnd lead the blind, both fall into the 
ditch : therefore, nobody should lead anybody. 

Lambs and fawns should be left free in the 
fields ; much more bears and wolves. 

If a man's gun and shot are his own, he may 
fire in any direction he pleases. 

A fence across a road is inconvenient ; much 
more one at the side of it. 

Babes should not be swaddled with their 
hands bound down to their sides : therefore 
they should be thrown out to roll in the ken- 
nels naked. 

None of these arguments are good, and the 
practical issues of them are worse. For there 

14 



210 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

are certain eternal laws for human conduct 
which are quite clearly discernible by human 
reason. So far as these are discovered and 
obeyed, by whatever machinery or authority 
the obedience is procured, there follow life and 
strength. So far as they are disobeyed, by 
whatever good intention the disobedience is 
brought about, there follow ruin and sorrow. 
And the first duty of every man in the world is 
to find his true master, and, for his own good, 
submit to him ; and to find his true inferior, 
and, for that inferior's good, conquer him. The 
punishment is sure, if we either refuse the re- 
verence, or are too cowardly and indolent to en- 
force the compulsion. A base nation crucifies or 
poisons its wise men, and lets its fools rave 
and rot in its streets. A wise nation obeys 
the one, restrains the other, and cherishes all. 

157. The best examples of the results of 
wise normal discipline in Art will be found in 
whatever evidence remains respecting the lives 
of great Italian painters, though, unhappily, 
in eras of progress, but just in proportion to 
the admirableness and efficiency of the life, will 
be usually the scantiness of its history. The 
individualities and liberties which are causes 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 211 

of destruction may be recorded ; but the loyal 
conditions of daily breath are never told. Be- 
cause Leonardo made models of machines, dug 
canals, built fortifications, and dissipated half 
his art-power in capricious ingenuities, we have 
many anecdotes of him ; — but no picture of 
importance on canvas, and only a few withered 
stains of one upon a wall. But because his 
pupil, or reputed pupil, Luini, laboured in con- 
stant and successful simplicity, we have no 
anecdotes of him ; — only hundreds of noble 
works. Luini is, perhaps, the best central type 
of the highly trained Italian painter. He is 
the only man who entirely united the religious 
temper which was the spirit-life of art, with the 
physical power which was its bodily Hfe. He 
joins the purity and passion of Angelico to the 
strength of Veronese : the two elements, poised 
in perfect balance, are so calmed and restrained, 
each by the other, that most of us lose the sense 
of both. The artist does not see the strength, 
by reason of the chastened spirit in which it 
is used ; and the religious visionary does not 
recognize the passion, by reason of the frank 
human truth with which it is rendered. He is 
a man ten times greater than Leonardo; — a 



212 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

mighty colourist, while Leonardo was only a fine 
draughtsman in black, staining the chiaroscuro 
drawing, like a coloured print : he perceived 
and rendered the delicatest types of human 
beauty that have been painted since the days 
of the Greeks, while Leonardo depraved his 
finer instincts by caricature, and remained to the 
end of his days the slave of an archaic smile : 
and he is a designer as frank, instinctive, and 
exhaustless as Tintoret, while Leonardo's de- 
sign is only an agony of science, admired chiefly 
because it is painful, and capable of analysis in 
its best accomplishment. Luini has left nothing 
behind him that is not lovely ; but of his life I 
believe hardly anything is known beyond rem- 
nants of tradition which murmur about Lugano 
and Saronno, and which remain ungleaned. 
This only is certain, that he was born in the 
loveliest district of North Italy, where hills, and 
streams, and air, meet in softest harmonies. 
Child of the Alps, and of their divinest lake, 
he is taught, without doubt or dismay, a lofty re- 
ligious creed, and a sufficient law of fife, and of 
its mechanical arts. Whether lessoned by Leo- 
nardo himself, or merely one of many, disciplined 
in the system of the Milanese school, he learns 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 213 

unerringly to draw, unerringly and enduringly 
to paint. His tasks are set him without ques- 
tion day by day, by men who are justly satis- 
fied with his work, and who accept it without 
any harmful praise or senseless blame. Place, 
scale, and subject are determined for him on 
the cloister wall or the church dome ; as he 
is required, and for sufficient daily bread, and 
little more, he paints what he has been taught 
to design wisely, and has passion to realize glo- 
riously : every touch he lays is eternal, every 
thought he conceives is beautiful and pure : his 
hand moves alwa3^s in radiance of blessing ; 
from day to day his life enlarges in power and 
peace ; it passes away cloudlessly, the starry 
twilight remaining arched far against the night. 
158. Oppose to such a life as this that of 
a great painter amidst the elements of modern 
English liberty. Take the life of Turner, in 
whom the artistic energy and inherent love of 
beauty were at least as strong as in Luini : but, 
amidst the disorder and ghastliness of the lower 
streets of London, his instincts in early infancy 
were warped into toleration of evil, or even 
into delight in it. He gathers what he can of 
instruction by questioning and prying among 



214 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

half-informed masters ; spells out some know- 
ledge of classical fable ; educates himself, by 
an admirable force, to the production of wildly 
majestic or pathetically tender and pure pictures, 
by which he cannot live. There is no one to 
judge them, or to command him : only some of 
the English upper classes hire him to paint their 
houses and parks, and destroy the drawings 
afterwards by the most wanton neglect. Tired 
of labouring carefully, without either reward or 
praise, he dashes out into various experimental 
and popular works — makes himself the servant 
of the lower public, and is dragged hither and 
thither at their will ; while yet, helpless and 
guideless, he indulges his idiosyncrasies till they 
change into insanities ; the strength of his soul 
increasing its sufferings, and giving force to its 
errors ; all the purpose of life degenerating into 
instinct ; and the web of his work wrought, at 
last, of beauties too subtle to be understood, 
his liberty, with vices too singular to be for- 
given — all useless, because magnificent idiosyn- 
crasy had become solitude, or contention, in 
the midst of a reckless populace, instead of sub- 
mitting itself in loyal harmony to the Art-laws 
of an understanding nation. And the life passed 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 21 5 

away in darkness ; and its final work, in all 
the best beauty of it, lias already perished, only 
enough remaining to teach us what we have 
lost. 

159. These are the opposite effects of Law 
and of Liberty on men of the highest powers. 
In the case of inferiors the contrast is still 
more fatal ; under strict law, they become the 
subordinate workers in great schools, healthily 
aiding, echoing, or supplying, with multitudi- 
nous force of hand, the mind of the leading 
masters : they are the nameless carvers of great 
architecture — stainers of glass — hammerers of 
iron — helpful scholars, whose work ranks round, 
if not with, their master's, and never disgraces 
it. But the inferiors under a system of licence 
for the most part perish in miserable effort ;* 

* As 1 correct this sheet for press, my Pall Mall Gazette 
of last Saturday, April 17th, is lying on the table by me. I 
print a few lines out of it : — 

"An Artist's Death. — A sad story was told at an in- 
quest held in St. Pancras last night by Dr. Lankester on 
the body of * * *, aged fifty-nine, a French artist, who was 
found dead in his bed at his rooms in * * * Street. M. * * *, 
also an artist, said he had known the deceased for fifteen 
years. He once held a high position, and being anxious to 
make a name in the world, he five years ago commenced a 
large picture, which he hoped, when completed, to have in 
the gallery at Versailles ; and with that view he sent a 



2l6 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

a few struggle into pernicious eminence — harm- 
ful alike to themselves and to all who admire 
them ; many die of starvation ; many insane, 
either in weakness of insolent egotism, like 
Haydon, or in a conscientious agony of beau- 
tiful purpose and warped power, like Blake. 
There is no probability of the persistence of a 
licentious school in any good accidentally dis- 
covered by them ; there is an approximate cer- 
tainty of their gathering, with acclaim, round 

photograph of it to the French Emperor. He also had an 
idea of sending it to the Enghsh Royal Academy. He 
laboured on this picture, neglecting other work which would 
have paid him well, and gradually sank lower and lower into 
poverty. His friends assisted him, but being absorbed in his 
great work, he did not heed their advice, and they left him. 
He was, however, assisted by the French Ambassador, and 
last Saturday he (the witness) saw deceased, who was much 
depressed in spirits, as he expected the brokers to be put 
in possession for rent. He said his troubles were so great 
that he feared his brain would give way. The witness gave 
him a shilling, for which he appeared very thankful. On 
Monday the witness called upon him, but received no answer 
to his knock. He went again on Tuesday, and entered the 
deceased's bedroom, and found him dead. Dr. George Ross 
said that when called in to the deceased he had been dead at 
least two days. The room was in a filthy, dirty condition, 
and the picture referred to — certainly a very fine one — was 
in that room. The post-mortem examination showed that 
the cause of death was fatty degeneration of the heart, the 
latter probably having ceased its action through the mental 
excitement of the deceased." 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 21/ 

any shadow of evil, and following it to what- 
ever quarter of destruction it may lead. 

1 60. Thus far the notes on Freedom. Now, 
lastly, here is some talk which I tried at the 
time to make intelligible ; and with which I 
close this volume, because it will serve suffi- 
ciently to express the practical relation in which 
I think the art and imagination of the Greeks 
stand to our own ; and will show the reader 
that my view of that relation is unchanged, from 
the first day on which I began to write, until 
now. 

The Hercules of Camarina. 

Address to the Students of the Art School of 
South Lavibeth, March i^th, i86g. 

161. Among the photographs of Greek coins 
which present so many admirable subjects for 
your study, I must speak for the present of one 
only : the Hercules of Camarina. You have, 
represented by a Greek workman, in that coin, 
the face of a man, and the skin of a lion's head. 
And the man's face is like a man's face, but the 
lion's skin is not like a lion's skin. 

162. Now there are some people who will 
tell you that Greek art is fine, because it is 



2l8 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

true ; and because it carves men's faces as like 
men's faces as it can. 

And there are other people who will tell you 
that Greek art is fine because it is not true ; and 
carves a lion's skin so as to look not at all like 
a lion's skin. 

And you fancy that one or other of these sets 
of people must be wrong, and are perhaps much 
puzzled to find out which you should believe. 

But neither of them are wrong, and you will 
have eventually to believe, or rather to under- 
stand and know, in reconciliation, the truths 
taught by each ; — but for the present, the 
teachers of the first group are those you must 
follow. 

It is they who tell you the deepest and use- 
fullest truth, which involves all others in time. 
Greek art, and all other art, is fine when it makes 
a marts face as like a man^s face as it can. Hold 
to that. All kinds of nonsense are talked to 
you, now-a-days, ingeniously and irrelevantly 
about art. Therefore, for the most part of the 
day, shut your ears, and keep your eyes open : 
and understand primarily, what you may, I fancy, 
understand easily, that the greatest masters of 
all greatest schools — Phidias, Donatello, Titian, 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 2I9 

Velasquez, or Sir Joshua Reynolds — all tried 
to make human creatures as like human crea- 
tures as they could ; and that anything less like 
humanity than their work, is not so good as 
theirs. 

Get that well driven into your heads ; and 
don't let it out again, at your peril. 

163. Having got it well in, you may then 
farther understand, safely, that there is a great 
deal of secondary work in pots, and pans, and 
floors, and carpets, and shawls, and architec- 
tural ornament, which ought, essentially, to be 
unlike reality, and to depend for its charm on 
quite other qualities than imitative ones. But 
all such art is inferior and secondary — much 
of it more or less instinctive and animal ; and 
a civilized human creature can only learn its 
principles rightly, by knowing those of great 
civilized art first — which is always the repre- 
sentation, to the utmost of its power, of what- 
ever it has got to show — made to look as like 
the thing as possible. Go into the National 
Gallery, and look at the foot of Correggio's 
Venus there. Correggio made it as like a foot 
as he could, and you won't easily find anything 
liker. Now, you will find on any Greek vase 



220 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

something meant for a foot, or a hand, which 
is not at all like one. The Greek vase is a good 
thing in its way, but Correggio's picture is the 
best work. 

164. So, again, go into the Turner room of 
the National Gallery, and look at Turner's draw- 
ing of " Ivy Bridge." You will find the water 
in it is like real water, and the ducks in it 
are like real ducks. Then go into the British 
Museum, and look for an Egyptian landscape, 
and you will find the water in that constituted 
of blue zigzags, not at all like water ; and ducks 
in the middle of it made of red lines, looking 
not in the least as if they could stand stuffing 
with sage and onions. They are very good in 
their way, but Turner's are better. 

165. I will not pause to fence my general 
principle against what you perfectly well know 
of the due contradiction, — that a thing may be 
painted very like, yet painted ill. Rest content 
with knowing that it nuist be like, if it is painted 
well; and take this further general law: — Imita- 
tion is like charity. When it is done for love, 
it is lovely ; when it is done for show, hateful. 

166. Well, then, this Greek coin is fine, first 
because the face is like a face. Perhaps you 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 221 

think there is something particularly handsome 
in the face, which you can't see in the photo- 
graph, or can't at present appreciate. But 
there is nothing of the kind. It is a very regular, 
quiet, commonplace sort of face ; and any aver- 
age English gentleman's, of good descent, would 
be far handsomer. 

167. Fix that in your heads also, therefore, 
that Greek faces are not particularly beautiful. 
Of the much nonsense against which you are 
to keep your ears shut, that which is talked to 
you of the Greek ideal of beauty, is among the 
absolutest. There is not a single instance of a 
very beautiful head left by the highest school 
of Greek art. On coins, there is even no approxi- 
mately beautiful one. The Juno of Argos is a 
virago ; the Athena of Athens grotesque ; the 
Athena of Corinth is insipid ; and of Thurium, 
sensual. The Siren Ligeia, and fountain of 
Arethusa, on the coins of Terina and Syracuse, 
are prettier, but totally without expression, and 
chiefly set oft' by their well-curled hair. You 
might have expected something subtle in Mer- 
curies ; but the Mercury of ^Enus is a very 
stupid-looking fellow, in a cap like a bowl, with 
a knob on the top of it. The Bacchus of Thasos 



222 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

is a drayman with his hair pomatum'd. The 
Jupiter of Syracuse is, however, calm and re- 
fined ; and the Apollo of Clazomenae would 
have been impressive, if he had not come down 
to us much flattened by friction. But on the 
whole, the merit of Greek coins does not pri- 
marily depend on beauty of features, nor even, 
in the period of highest art, that of the statues. 
You may take the Venus of Melos as a standard 
of beauty of the central Greek type. She has 
tranquil, regular, and lofty features ; but could 
not hold her own for a moment against the 
beauty of a simple English girl, of pure race 
and kind heart, 

1 68. And the reason that Greek art, on the 
whole, bores you, (and you know it does,) is 
that you are always forced to look in it for 
.something that is not there ; but which may be 
seen every day, in real life, all round you ; and 
which you are naturally disposed to delight in, 
and ought to delight in. For the Greek race 
was not at all one of exalted beauty, but only 
of general and healthy completeness of form. 
They were only, and could be only, beautiful 
in body to the degree that they were beautiful 
in soul ; (for you will find, when you read 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 223 

deeply into the matter, that the body is only 
the soul made visible). And the Greeks were 
indeed very good people, much better people 
than most of us think, or than many of us are ; 
but there are better people alive now than the 
best of them, and lovelier people to be seen now, 
than the loveliest of them. 

169. Then, what are the merits of this Greek 
art, which make it so exemplary for you ? 
Well, not that it is beautiful, but that it is 
Right.* All that it desires to do, it does, and 
all that it does, does well. You will find, as you 
advance in the knowledge of art, that its laws of 
self-restraint are very marvellous; that its peace 
of heart, and contentment in doing a simple 
thing, with only one or two qualities, restrictedly 
desired, and sufficientl}' attained, are a most 
wholesome element of education for you, as op- 
posed to the wild writhing, and wrestling, and 
longing for the moon, and tilting at windmills, 
and agony of eyes, and torturing of finger.s, 
and general spinning out of one's soul into 
fiddlestrings, which constitute the ideal life of 
a modern artist. 

Also observe, there is entire masterhood of 

* Compare above, § loi. 



224 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

its business up to the required point. A Greek 
does not reach after other people's strength, 
nor out-reach his own. He never tries to paint 
before he can draw ; he never tries to lay on 
flesh where there are no bones ; and he never 
expects to find the bones of anything in his 
inner consciousness. Those are his first merits 
— sincere and innocent purpose, strong common 
sense and principle, and all the strength that 
comes of these, and all the grace that follows 
on that strength. 

170. But, secondly, Greek art is always ex- 
emplary in disposition of masses, which is a 
thing that in modern days students rarely look 
for, artists not enough, and the public never. 
But, whatever else Greek work may fail of, you 
may be always sure its masses are well placed, 
and their placing has been the object of the 
most subtle care. Look, for instance, at the in- 
scription in front of this Hercules of the name 
of the town — Camarina. You can't read it, even 
though you may know Greek, without some 
pains ; for the sculptor knew well enough that 
it mattered very little whether you read it or not, 
for the Camarina Hercules could tell his own 
story ; but what did above all things matter 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART, 225 

was, that no K or A or M should come in a 
wrong place with respect to the outline of the 
head, and divert the eye from it, or spoil any 
6f its lines. So the whole inscription is thrown 
into a sweeping curve of gradually diminishing 
size, continuing from the Hon's paws, round 
the neck, up to the forehead, and answering a 
decorative purpose as completely as the curls 
of the mane opposite. Of these, again, you 
cannot change or displace one without mischief: 
they are almost as even in reticulation as a 
piece of basket-work ; but each has a different 
form and a due relation to the rest, and if you 
set to work to draw that mane rightly, you will 
find that, whatever time you give to it, you 
can't get the tresses quite into their places, 
and that every tress out of its place does an 
injury. If you want to test your powers of 
accurate drawing you may make that lion's 
mane your pons asinorum. I have never yet 
met with a student who didn't make an ass in 
a lion's skin of himself, when he tried it. 

171. Granted, however, that these tresses 
may be finely placed, still they are not hke a 
lion's mane. So we come back to the question, 
— if the face is to be like a man's face, why 

15 



226 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

is not the lion's mane to be like a lion's mane ? 
Well, because it can't be like a lion's mane 
without too much trouble ; — and inconvenience 
after that, and poor success, after all. Too 
much trouble, in cutting the die into fine fringes 
and jags ; inconvenience after that, — because 
fringes and jags would spoil the surface of a 
coin ; poor success after all, — because, though 
you can easily stamp cheeks and foreheads 
smooth at a blow, you can't stamp projecting 
tresses fine at a blow, whatever pains you take 
with your die. 

So your Greek uses his common sense, 
wastes no time, loses no skill, and says to you, 
" Here are beautifully set tresses, which I have 
carefully designed and easily stamped. Enjoy 
them ; and if you cannot understand that they 
mean lion's mane, heaven mend your wits." 

172. See then, you have in this work, well- 
founded knowledge, simple and right aims, 
thorough mastery of handicraft, splendid in- 
vention in arrangement, unerring common sense 
in treatment, — merits, these, I think, exemplary 
enough to justify our tormenting you a little 
with Greek Art. But it has one merit more 
than these, the greatest of all. It always 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 22/ 

means something worth saying. Not merely 
worth saying for that time only, but for all 
time. What do you think this helmet of lion's 
hide is always given to Hercules for ? You 
can't suppose it means only that he once killed 
a lion, and always carried its skin afterwards 
to show that he had, as Indian sportsmen send 
home stuffed rugs, with claws at the corners, 
and a lump in the middle, which one tumbles 
over every time one stirs the fire. What zvas 
this Nemean Lion, whose spoils were evermore 
to cover Hercules from the cold ? Not merely 
a large specimen of Felis Leo, ranging the 
fields of Nemea, be sure of that. This Nemean 
cub was one of a bad litter. Born of Typhon 
and Echidna, — of the whirlwind and the snake, 
— Cerberus his brother, the Hydra of Lerna 
his sister, — it must have been difficult to get 
his hide off him. He had to be found in dark- 
ness too, and dealt upon without weapons, by 
grip at the throat — arrows and club of no avail 
against him. What does all that mean ? 

173. It means that the Nemean Lion is the 
first great adversary of life, whatever that may 
be — to Hercules, or to any of us, then or now. 
The first monster we have to strangle, or to 



228 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

be destroyed by, fighting in the dark, and with 
none to help us, only Athena standing by, to 
encourage with her smile. Every man's Ne- 
mean Lion lies in wait for him somewhere. 
The slothful man says, there is a lion in the 
path. He says well. The quite ««slothful 
man says the same, and knows it too. But 
they differ in their further reading of the text. 
The slothful man says, / shall be slain, and the 
unslothful, IT shall be. It is the first ugly and 
strong enemy that rises against us, all future 
victory depending on victory over that. Kill 
it ; and through all the rest of life, what was 
once dreadful is your armour, and you are 
clothed with that conquest for every other, and 
helmed with its crest of fortitude for evermore. 

Alas, we have most of us to walk bare- 
headed ; but that is the meaning of the story 
of Nemea, — worth laying to heart and thinking 
of, sometimes, when you see a dish garnished 
with parsley, which was the crown at the 
Nemean games. 

174. How far, then, have we got, in our list 
of the merits of Greek art now ? 

Sound knowledge. 

Simple aims. 



111. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 229 

Mastered craft. 

Vivid invention. 

Strong common sense. 

And eternally true and wise meaning. 

Are these not enough ? Here is one more 
then, which will find favour, I should think, with 
the British Lion. Greek art is never frightened 
at anything, it is always cool. 

175. It differs essentially from all other art, 
past or present, in this incapability of being 
frightened. Half the power and imagination of 
every other school depend on a certain feverish 
terror mingling with their sense of beauty ; — 
the feeling that a child has in a dark room, 
or a sick person in seeing ugly dreams. But 
the Greeks never have ugly dreams. They can- 
not draw anything ugly when they try. Some- 
times they put themselves to their wits'-end 
to draw an ugly thing, — the Medusa's head, 
for instance, — but they can't do it, — not they, 
— because nothing frightens them. They widen 
the mouth, and grind the teeth, and puff the 
cheeks, and set the eyes a-goggling; and the 
thing is only ridiculous after all, not the least 
dreadful, for there is no dread in their hearts. 
Pensiveness ; amazement ; often deepest grief 



2^0- THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

and desolateness. All these ; but terror never. 
Everlasting calm in the presence of all fate ; 
and joy such as they could win, not indeed in 
a perfect beauty, but in beauty at perfect rest ! 
A kind of art this, surely, to be looked at, and 
thought upon sometimes with profit, even in 
these latter days. 

176. To be looked at sometimes. Not con- 
tinually, and never as a model for imitation. 
For you are not Greeks ; but, for better or 
worse, English creatures ; and cannot do, even 
if it were a thousand times better worth doing, 
anything well, except what your English hearts 
shall prompt, and your English skies teach you. 
For all good art is the natural utterance of its 
own people in its own day. 

But also, your own art is a better and 
brighter one. than ever this Greek art was. 
Many motives, powers, and insights have been 
added to those elder ones. The very corrup- 
tions into which we have fallen are signs of a 
subtle life, higher than theirs was, and there- 
fore more fearful in its faults and death. 
Christianity has neither superseded, nor, by 
itself, excelled heathenism ; but it has added 
its own good, won also by many a Nemean 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 23 1 

contest in dark valleys, to all that was good and 
noble in heathenism : and our present thoughts 
and work, when they are right, are nobler than 
the heathen's. And we are not reverent enough 
to them, because we possess too much of them. 
That sketch of four cherub heads from an 
EngHsh girl, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, at Ken- 
sington, is an incomparably finer thing than 
ever the Greeks did. Ineffably tender in the 
touch, yet Herculean in power ; innocent, yet 
exalted in feeling ; pure in colour as a pearl : 
reserved and decisive in design, as this Lion 
crest,— if /'/ alone existed of such,^if it were 
a picture by Zeuxis, the only one left in the 
world, and you built a shrine for it, and were 
allowed to see it only seven days in a year, it 
alone would teach you all of art that you ever 
needed to know. But you do not learn from 
this or any other such work, because you have 
not reverence enough for them, and are trying 
to learn from all at once, and from a hundred 
other masters besides. 

177- Here, then, is the practical advice which 
I would venture to deduce from what I have 
tried to show you. Use Greek art as a first, 
not a final, teacher. Learn to draw carefully 



232 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

from Greek work ; above all, to place forms 
correctly, and to use light and shade tenderly. 
Never allow yourselves black shadows. It is 
easy to make things look round and projecting ; 
but the things to exercise yourselves in are the 
placing of the masses, and the modelling of the 
lights. It is an admirable exercise to take a 
pale wash of colour for all the shadows, never 
reinforcing it everywhere, but drawing the 
statue as if it were in far distance, making all 
the darks one flat pale tint. Then model from 
those into the lights, rounding as well as you 
can, on those subtle conditions. In your chalk 
drawings, separate the lights from the darks at 
once all over; then reinforce the darks slightly 
where absolutely necessary, and put your whole 
strength on the lights and their limits. Then, 
when you have learned to draw thoroughly, 
take one master for your painting, as you would 
have done necessarily in old times by being 
put into his school (were I to choose for you, 
it should be among six men only, — Titian, 
Correggio, Paul Veronese, Velasquez, Rey- 
nolds, or Holbein. If you are a landscapist. 
Turner must be your only guide, for no other 
great landscape painter has yet lived) ; and 



III. ATHENA IN THE HEART. 233 

having chosen, do your best to understand your 
own chosen master, and obe}' /////;, and no one 
else, till you have strength to deal with the 
nature itself round you, and then, be your own 
master and see with your own eyes. If 3'ou 
have got masterhood or sight in you, that is 
the way to make the most of them ; and if 3'ou 
have neither, you will at least be sound in your 
work, prevented from immodest and useless 
effort, and protected from vulgar and fantastic 
error. 

And so I wish you all, good speed, and the 
favour of Hercules and the Muses ; and to 
those who shall best deserve them, the crown 
of Parsley first, and then of the Laurel. 



THE END. 



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